His brothers in spirit, healthy, happy, lazy, young scamps, are loitering about the Piazza, with boxes of cheap mosaic trinkets, smiling caressingly at passing Englishwomen, and saucily offering them their goods: “Des mosaïques, madame? Très jolies et pas chères!” There is a passing _vetturino_ (cabman) raising his finger, and gazing fixedly at the _forestiere_ (foreigner), implying with look and gesture an obliging readiness to drive him to the end of the earth. Leaning against a column, there stands the plague of contemporary Rome: a middle-aged guide, with the face of a benevolent old father who has had no luck in life. He is muffled up in a brightly coloured scarf, and with a massive walking-stick in his hand, he lingers beside a historical monument and awaits his victim, the next unsuspecting and simple passing tourist. He stares gloomily at a crowd of shrieking street urchins, who have just emerged from a neighbouring alley. They are supposed to be selling newspapers, but actually they are eternally fighting, rolling in the dust, throwing about and soiling the newly printed journals. They are dispersed and driven away with a stick by a tall, bent old man, picturesquely draped in an enormous grey cloth cloak with a fur collar. This garment the old man has dragged as a remembrance from the shoulders of a late faithful lodger, recently deceased at an extreme old age. The inconsolable landlord is going to a _festa_, one of those solemn Masses, with a Cardinal officiating, which are celebrated almost every day in one or other of Rome’s innumerable churches. Behind his indescribably dirty ear, that has never been washed since his birth, he has tucked a red carnation, as a sign of respect to the saint whose memory he is going to honour. Suddenly, a group of wandering musicians show themselves on the Piazza. One plays the violin, another blows a trumpet, while a third, in a broken top-hat and a rusty overcoat, sings _canzonettas_, and dances. Immediately, a crowd collects. At all the open windows appear signoras with black eyes and raven tresses, pushing away with their hands the rags hung out to dry. They are all laughing and screaming and chattering, they are all happy. This is still the same pleasure-loving ancient-Roman crowd, living more in the street than at home, and revelling in anything in the nature of a pageant. Arrange a gladiator’s fight to-morrow in the Colosseum, and they will all rush to the spot, and applaud the victor as passionately as ever did their ancestors. Sometimes these Piazzas are the scenes of antiquarian markets. Light wooden booths are erected for the sale of old cassocks and other priestly vestments, pieces of material, embroideries, lace, old brooches, bracelets, fans, candlesticks in the shape of antique lamps, books printed on faded yellow parchment, pictures, and statuettes. All this is bought up fast and feverishly by Englishwomen and Americans, whom the wily Romans deceive in the most ungodly manner.