Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/234

244 of Grammont, née Princess of Baden, an elderly lady, with traces of great beauty, and with much natural dignity of manner. The young girl, who was very pretty, but whose countenance showed more of intellect and clearness than feeling, had caused much grief to her Protestant parents, resident in Paris, by her conversion to the Catholic Church; but this was of no consequence.

There was a great deal that was beautiful and Christian in the exhortations of Monsignor L——, but still that could not disguise from me the unchristian part of this abjuration, and the erroneous conception of the Christian Church upon which it is based. When the ceremony was over, the seven or eight persons who were present, congratulated her who “had returned to the bosom of the church,” as the phrase was, after which the noble Marchioness and some other persons came up to me, and expressed the hope that I also should soon become a member of the only saving church. I replied, that “I hoped to increase in a knowledge of the truth,” leaving them to guess what I meant thereby.

The evening of this day had nearly been tragical for me and my young friend. We were going, with the whole world of Rome, to see from the Piazza del Popolo, La Girandola, or the grand fireworks, which, according to a design of Michael Angelo's, are displayed annually on Monte Pincio, whence, as far as the square, people have been employed for the last two weeks in erecting various mysterious looking stages. We had received tickets from Monsignor Laschiavo, which would admit us to a gallery just