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A Woman Styled Bold
ruled the Papal States from a throne and at the same time demanded from
his flock the obedience of faith. Indeed the combination at that time of
spiritual and temporal authority, both seemingly absolute, in the office of \
pope, might well prove irresistible to a man of Pierce’s temperament.
Thursday, 25 February found the Connelly family, a French nanny and
all their boxes in a hired carriage driving across the campagna to the Eternal
City. As Pierce had already discovered when crossing the Atlantic, ‘the
troubles and pain attendant upon travelling with little children were far
greater’ than could be imagined. The baby Adeline was not yet a year old
and Mercer, a very delicate little boy and something of a handful, according
to his mother who told his aunt he liked to play the master, was only just
three. Both of them still had colds and so had Cornelia. The nanny Annette
did not speak English, they were all cooped up and the road was bumpy.
It was also freezing weather, the Tiber had flooded badly that year, marshes
were full and farms were water-logged. The last lap must have seemed
disproportionately long.
The Via Aurelia brought them across the campagna from the west and
Hi 4 when at last they saw the city on the horizon the winter sun was setting
te behind them. ‘You may suppose,’ Pierce wrote to their friend Bishop Purcell,
‘we looked out for the first glimpse of the Miraculous City with breathless
interest.’ The vettura rattled on along the ancient paved road. Soon they
bey were keeping company with the arches of Trajan’s aqueduct and finally
| they came up to the city walls, at which they would have gazed with some
7 amazement. Rome at that date was still a walled city. The population was
El about 200,000. The people lived in a congestion of palazzos, churches and
| dwelling-houses crammed into the north-west quarter of the whole enclosed
area. The rest of the land within the walls was laid out as gardens of
beautiful villas or as vineyards owned by old Roman families or monasteries.
Some of it was public meadow. Most of the ancient ruins of the early Roman
Empire stood amidst fields in the southern part. Cows grazed there and
people wandered at will. Gates pierced the walls and travellers coming from
Civitavecchia entered by the Porta Cavalleggeri.
As their coach lumbered under the arch an exhausted Cornelia was
probably no more than grateful to be nearly there but Pierce was overflowing
md with religious fervour. He told Bishop Purcell:
A little incident occurred as we entered. Just as a sudden turn brought
us right before St Peter’s and apparently no more than a square off, a
flock of birds rose up from each of the smaller’cupolas. They maintained
for a moment their separate companies but suddenly they... joined
themselves together and then continued indistinguishably mixing in all
their infinite and graceful evolutions... I connected the beautiful sight
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