After an address of this description, an approving murmur used to be discernible among the crowd, while now and then an irrepressible “_bravo_,” or a patronizing “_bene, bene_,” would be heard. But, apart from the peasants—who, as I have said, flocked in large numbers to these ceremonies—and the poor old women, whose withered lips and palsied fingers were ever busy in saying their rosary and counting its beads, I should be sorry to have to estimate how much real devotion dwelt in the hearts of the multitude which daily congregated at the duomo.
On the last evening of the Novena, I remember well the utter failure of the Chevalier V——, the * * * Consul, to elicit a spark of devotional enthusiasm. We were all standing on the duomo steps, looking at the fireworks which concluded the solemnity, when a triumph of Anconitan pyrotechnic art disclosed a star, with the initial M. At this the good man, thoroughly honest in his convictions, waved his hat in the air, and shouted to the crowd, “Let us have an _Evviva_ for Maria;” but not a man's voice responded. There was a feeble quaver of cracked trebles and then silence. He looked sad and mortified, but did not repeat the experiment. He never discussed the subject with us; but I know that he implicitly accepted the authenticity of the miracle. He would have considered it as a sin to permit his mind to wander into any questionings on that to which the Church had set her seal.
But there were few like him in Ancona. I could count on my fingers, without passing those of one hand even, such amongst the _Codino_ nobles as entered with any earnestness into the Novena. The dominant feeling with persons who still held belief in their religion, yet whose judgment was not denied its exercise, was profound regret at the whole proceeding; they rightly estimated it as only calculated to spread irreverence and scepticism.
Upon the vast majority of the thinking classes,—the lawyers, the physicians, the young priests (many of whom are materialists), and the merchants,—precisely this result was produced. The official attestation of the miracle was set down as a clumsy device to rekindle the faith of the peasants and lower orders, and bind them more closely to the Papacy; and religion only reaped contempt and derision for lending herself to such practices.