Villa, just outside the gate, had a few festoons hung over the garden wall, which fronts the road; but one of the Patrizzi family, I should mention, is a Cardinal. The villas on the road exhibited no decorations or signs of festivity whatever. Indeed, I only observed three houses in all which had placed hangings before their windows, or made any preparations in honour of the event. There were not many persons outside the gates. Every few steps you met patrols of six French soldiers headed by a gendarme. These patrols had been sent by General Goyon to keep the crowd in order; but, unfortunately, there was no crowd to keep in order; so that the soldiers looked and seemed to feel as if they were sent on a fool's errand. At St Agnese there were some 150 carriages collected, almost all hired ones, of the poorer sort. The private vehicles were very few indeed; not a quarter of the muster at most. The church itself was gaily filled, but not crowded in any part. Priests, monks, and women formed nine-tenths of the congregation. The sacrament was administered by the Pope himself to a number of communicants, amongst whom the English converts visiting Rome were as usual conspicuous. After mass was over the Pope had breakfast at the Convent, and returned about noon to the city. Meanwhile, something approaching to a crowd, that is about 600 people, half of whom were priests and the rest _impiegati_, were collected at the gates; and as the Pope passed to his coach and four, each of this crowd, with somewhat suspicious unanimity, drew a handkerchief from his pocket, and raised a feeble cheer. Inside the gates, and along the streets through which the Papal procession passed, there was no appearance of any unusual concourse of people. By the corner of the Gualtro Fontane street, near the new palace of Queen Christina, a large body of nuns and school-children, decked out in white, were drawn up on the pavement, who waved their hats, and threw flowers as the Pope went by; but this was all; and even the Pope himself could hardly have supposed what demonstration there was to be spontaneous. It is true the _Giornale_ made the most of it. Their narrative ran thus: "About half-past eleven in the morning his Holiness, accompanied by the applause of all who had joined to escort him, entered his carriage, and took the road towards his residence at the Vatican. Words are insufficient to express the enthusiastic affection, the joyous demonstrations, which, for the length of three miles from St Agnese to the Quirinal, were manifested towards him by the good people of this Sovereign City, who had crowded to behold his passage; and who, by any means in their power, expressed the tender affection which they could not but entertain for his sacred person. Infinite, too, was the number of carriages which followed the Royal cortege to the Pontifical palace of St Peter's."