At the height of the excitement caused by this fresh
diversion, the sound of sacred music was heard ; it came
from a procession of monks, ordered by the cardinal
camerlingo as a means of inducing heaven to decree the
prompt election of a pope, and was on its way from the
Church of Ava Coeli to the capitol, stopping before the
principal Madonnas, and in the most frequented
churches. As soon as the crucifix which was carried at
the head of the procession appeared, absolute silence
fell upon the crowd, and every one kneeled where he
stood ; a period of silent, devout meditation succeeded
the tumult and confusion which had reigned supreme a
few moments earlier, and assumed a more threatening
character at each fresh column of smoke. Many people
believed that the procession was intended to serve a
political, as well as a religious end, and that its influence
was likely to be as great on earth as in heaven. At all



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THE BOEGIAS. 19

events if such was the design of the camerlingo, he was
not at fault, and the effect produced was such as he de-
sired ; when the procession had passed on, although the
laughter and horse-play continued, the shouts and
threats were heard no more. Thus the day slipped by,
for at Rome no one works ; every one is either a cardinal
or a lackey, and lives, one knows not how. The crowd
was more dense than ever about two in the afternoon,
when another procession, which was as successful in
causing renewed uproar, as the earlier one in enforcing
silence, crossed the square of St. Peter's ; it was the
dinner procession. The people greeted it with their cus-
tomary shouts of laughter, with no suspicion, in their
irreverence, that this second procession was more effica-
cious than the first, in that it was to be the means of
making a new pope.
