"All shut up. You know that a wing of the Vatican overlooks the square,
and that the Pope's apartments are in that wing. Every window was
closed; it looked like an abandoned palace; like a cold, rigid,
impassive face, staring straight ahead with wide-open motionless eyes.
The crowd looked up at it with a murmur.

"Over by the church steps I noticed a lot of officers and gentlemen
moving about and giving orders, which seemed to be handed on through the
crowd. The excitement was increasing. Every head in the square was
uncovered; white heads of old men, brown heads of soldiers, fair heads
of little children. The sun blazed down on it all. Thousands of shapes,
colors, sounds, seemed to undulate and blend; banners, green boughs,
fluttering rags, were tossed back and forth as though upon a dancing
sea. The crowd seethed and quivered as if the ground underfoot were on
fire.

"Suddenly there was a shout that swept over the whole square: 'The boys!
The children! Let's have the children!'"

"Then, as if every one were following some concerted plan of action, all
the children in the square were lifted up above the crowd, and the men
and women who carried them fought a way through to the front of the
Vatican. The bigger boys made their own way. Bands of ten and twenty of
them, holding each other by the hand, wriggled between people's legs;
hundreds of children, some on their own feet, some carried, some pushed,
a whole world of little folk, hidden till then in the crowd, suddenly
swarmed in one corner of the square; and how the women screamed! 'Take
care!--Make room!--Look out for my child!'"

"Presently there was another shout: 'The women now! The women!' and