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Updated: June 22, 2025
For, many years ago, when the square of the Santissimi Apostoli was still periodically strewn with sand that the Pope might not be jolted when his golden coach drove up to the church, and when the names of Charles Edward and his Countess were curiously mixed up in my brain with those of Charles the First and Mary Queen of Scots, there used to be in a little street leading out of the square towards the Colonna Gardens, a dark recess in the blank church-wall, an embrasure, sheltered by a pent-house roof and raised like a stage a few steep steps above the pavement; and in it loomed, strapped to a chair, dark in the shadow, a creature in a long black robe and a skull cap drawn close over his head; a vague, contorted, writhing and gibbering horror, of whose St.
The towers and steeples of the many house-encompassed churches, dark and dingy as the sky that seems descending on them, are no relief to the general gloom; a sun-dial on a church-wall has the look, in its useless black shade, of having failed in its business enterprise and stopped payment for ever; melancholy waifs and strays of housekeepers and porter sweep melancholy waifs and strays of papers and pins into the kennels, and other more melancholy waifs and strays explore them, searching and stooping and poking for anything to sell.
The breeze had fallen to a calm with the setting of the sun: the lighthouse had opened its glaring eye, and, disinclined to leave a spot sublimed both by early association and present regret, he moved back to the church-wall, warm from the afternoon sun, and sat down upon a window-sill facing the grave.
It seemed as if the inmate of that grave had desired to creep under the church-wall. On closer inspection, we found an almost illegible epitaph on the stone, and with difficulty made out this forlorn verse: "Poorly lived, And poorly died, Poorly buried, And no one cried."
He turned towards the spot where, year after year, the Purcills had been gathered, those who had died in their beds in their native town, and those who had perished in far-off climes, and whose bones had been brought to moulder by the old church-wall. He found the stone, and, bending down, read, "Elizabeth Purcill, died Oct. 5th, 18 , aged 19."
When he stood by the church-wall on Sundays, and the community glided past, saluting and glancing sideways at him, now and then one stepping up for the honor of exchanging a couple of words with him, it could almost be said that, standing there, he controlled the whole parish with a straw, which, of course, hung in the corner of his mouth.
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