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Updated: May 21, 2025
Persons received in audience are accompanied by the 'camerieri segreti, who do the honours in full dress, wearing their chains and carrying their staves. The private library is a spacious room lined with bookcases made of a yellow wood from Brazil, some of which are curtained. Busts of several former Popes stand upon marble columns.
The whole pontifical family, the stream of assistant prelates, the patriarchs, the archbishops, and the bishops, with vestments and mitres of gold, the /Camerieri segreti partecipanti/ in violet silk, the /Camerieri partecipanti/ of the cape and the sword in black velvet Renascence costumes, with ruffs and golden chains, the whole innumerable ecclesiastical and laical suite, which not even a hundred pages of the "Gerarchia" can completely enumerate, the prothonotaries, the chaplains, the prelates of every class and degree, without mentioning the military household, the gendarmes with their busbies, the Palatine Guards in blue trousers and black tunics, the Swiss Guards costumed in red, yellow, and black, with breastplates of silver, suggesting the men at arms of some drama of the Romantic school, and the Noble Guards, superb in their high boots, white pigskins, red tunics, gold lace, epaulets, and helmets!
Two /Camerieri/, one in violet coat, the other of the Cape and the Sword, here do duty, receiving from the /bussolanti/ the persons who are to be honoured with audiences and conducting them to the door of the next room, the secret or private ante-chamber, where they hand them over to the /Camerieri segreti/.
These according to their rank cannot go beyond certain doors, so that the persons who are to have audience of the Pope are passed on from the servants to the Noble Guards, from the Noble Guards to the honorary Camerieri, and from the latter to the Camerieri segreti, until they at last reach the presence of the Holy Father.
Then, all at once, acclamations arose in the first hall, gathered volume, and drew nearer. This time it was the cortege itself. First came a detachment of the Swiss Guard in undress, headed by a sergeant; then a party of chair-bearers in red; and next the domestic prelates, including the four Camerieri segreti partecipanti.
One of these is held during the service by the prince assistant at the throne, the other two are delivered to the care of M. Coppiere, one of the Camerieri segreti partecipanti: the shortest is carried by the Pope in the procession. An embroidered apron is now placed over the Pope's knees, and the cardinals in turn receive a palm from Him, kissing the palm, his right hand and knee.
Then returning to the chapel they assist the Card. Celebrant to put on his white vestments at his faldistorio. The Cardinals assisted by theirs caudatarii take off their purple cappe, and put on others of scarlet brought in by their respective camerieri.
The Camerieri segreti alone had the right to occupy that last ante-chamber, and none but the cardinals might wait there till the Pope should condescend to receive them. And so when Signor Squadra made up his mind to admit Pierre, the latter could not restrain a slight nervous shiver as if he were passing into some redoubtable mysterious sphere beyond the limits of the lower world.
Then, reverting to Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo, the attache explained that the functions of Copiere, or papal cup-bearer, which his cousin should have discharged as one of the four Camerieri segreti partecipanti had become purely honorary since the dinners offered to diplomatists or in honour of newly consecrated bishops had been given by the Cardinal Secretary of State.
First came a detachment of the Swiss Guard in undress, headed by a sergeant; then a party of chair-bearers in red; and next the domestic prelates, including the four /Camerieri segreti partecipanti/. And finally, between two rows of Noble Guards, in semi-gala uniforms, walked the Holy Father, alone, smiling a pale smile, and slowly blessing the pilgrims on either hand.
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