Exalted by such visions, what to them were the gazing crowd and their own rags and squalor? They entered the Porziuncola singing: they came out at the side-door transfigured, and silent except for some breathless "Maria!" or "Gesù!" Their arms were thrown upward, their glowing black eyes were upraised, their thin swarthy faces burned with a vivid scarlet, their white teeth glittered between the parted lips. Round and round they went like a great water-wheel that revolves in sun and shadow, and the spray it tossed up as it issued from the Porziuncola was rapture, the fiery spray of the soul.
At last all remained outside the chapel, making two long lines from either side the door down the nave to the open air, their faces ever toward the chapel. Then they began to sing in voices as clear and sweet as a chorus of birds. Not a harsh note was there. They sang some hymn that had come down to them from other generations as the robins and the bobo-links drop their songs down to future nestlings, and ever a long-drawn note stretched bright and steady from one stanza to another. So singing, they stepped slowly backward, always gazing steadily at the lighted altar of the Porziuncola, visible through the door, and, stepping backward and singing, they slowly drew themselves out of the church, and the Pardon for them was over.
But though Asisi is not without its notable sights, the chief pleasures there are quiet ones. A walk down through the olive trees to the dry bed of the torrent Tescio will please one who is accustomed to rivers which never leave their beds. One strays among the rocks and pebbles that the rushing waters have brought down from the mountains, and stands dryshod under the arches of the bridges, with something of the feeling excited by visiting a deserted house; with the difference that the Undine people are sure to come rushing down from the mountains again some day. There one searches out charming little nooks which would make the loveliest of pictures. There was one in the Via del Terz' Ordine which was a sweet bit of color. Two rows of stone houses facing on other streets turn their backs to this, and shade it to a soft twilight, till it seems a corridor with a high blue ceiling rather than a street. There it lies forgotten. No one passes through it or looks into it. In one spot the tall houses are separated by a rod or so of high garden-wall with an arch in the middle of it, and under the arch is a door. Over this arch climbs a rose-vine with dropping clusters of tiny pink roses that lean on the stone, hang down into the shadow or lift and melt into the liquid, dazzling blue of the sky. Except the roses and the sky all is a gray shadow. It reminds one of some lovely picture of the Madonna with clustering cherub faces about her head, and you think it would not be discordant with the scene if a miraculous figure should steal into sight under that arch. It is one of the charms of Italy that it can always fitly frame whatever picture your imagination may paint.