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Updated: June 9, 2025
His dress a black cassock edged and buttoned with crimson, with a crimson skullcap and biretta, and a pectoral cross of gold enhanced the picturesqueness of his aspect, and as he entered the anteroom where one awaited his approach, the most Protestant knee instinctively bent. His dignity was astonishing.
He sat silent a moment, thinking. "I do not know him," he said at length; "but show him up." He put on his biretta, assumed a more erect attitude, and then turned to the pigeons. "Adieu," he said; "commercialism approaches in the person of an Englishman. He comes either to buy or to sell. You have nothing in common with him. Fly away to the Piazza, but come back tomorrow.
Very gently he removed hat and overcoat. And then I was sitting peacefully in the Morris chair, in my old cassock, and with my own old biretta on my head; and there was no longer that thin buzzing, shrill and torturing as a mosquito's, singing in my ears.
I had a hazy notion that somehow my being with him might protect him in case of any untoward happening, and minimize his risks. I ran into his bedroom and clapped his best hat on my head, leaving my biretta on his bed; and I put on his new dark overcoat over my cassock. Both the borrowed garments were too big for me, the hat coming down over my ears, the coat-sleeves over my hands.
The Cardinal was delighted at the boy's arrival, had a seat placed for him, and talked to him in the intermissions of the service. He complimented him on learning Italian so quickly, saying that he could speak very little German. When the music was over Wolfgang kissed the Cardinal's hand, and the latter, taking his red biretta from his head, invited the boy to make a long stay at the Papal court.
Near the open doors a priest, wearing cassock and biretta, stood narrowly scrutinising each face, and as Paul was about to pass he extended his hand, detaining him. "Mr. Paul Mario?" he said. "I am Paul Mario, yes." "His Eminence, Cardinal Pescara, begs the favour of a few moments' conversation." Opening a private door the priest led Paul along a bare, tiled corridor.
At the further end of this secluded place stood a rustic summer-house, now a veritable bower of yellow roses. Bending her head, Mora passed through an archway of yew, down three stone steps, and so on to the lawn. Then, out from the arbour stepped the Bishop, in his violet cassock and biretta, his breviary in his hand.
As the organ played and the choir and clergy entered the excitement was intense, and some of the congregation got on to their seats in their eagerness to see if the Father was there. He was not there. The black cassock and biretta in which he had lately preached were nowhere to be seen, and a murmur of disappointment passed over friends and enemies alike. Then came a disgraceful spectacle.
The priest intoned the first words of the Service for the Dead, walking at the head of the procession with his black biretta on his head; he had thrown a thick fur cloak over his surplice; the wind made the ends of his stole flutter; the words of the Latin hymn fell from his lips at intervals, dully, as though they had been frozen; he looked bored and impatient, and let his eyes wander into the distance.
"Is it like St. Paul's Cathedral?" asked the youth with resignation, as they alighted. At the entrance their eyes were arrested by a singular figure evidently hovering there with a similar anxiety to enter. It was that of a dark, thin man in a long black robe rather like a cassock; but the black cap on his head was of too strange a shape to be a biretta.
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