However, in this city one gets to have a cordial sympathy with the unbelieving Thomas, and not having been present at the theatre myself, I cannot endorse the story.
Last night I strolled down the Corso to see the guard pass.

The street was very full, at least full for Rome, where the streets seem empty at their fullest, and numerous groups of men were standing on the door-steps and at the shop windows.

Mounted patrols passed up and down the street, and wherever there seemed the nucleus of a crowd forming, knots of the Papal _sbirri_, with their long cloaks and cocked hats pressed over their eyes, and furtive hang-dog looking countenances, elbowed their way unopposed and apparently unnoticed.

In the square itself there were a hundred men or so, chiefly, I should judge, strangers or artists, a group of young ragamuffins, who had climbed upon the pedestals of the columns, and seemed actuated only by the curiosity natural to the boy genus, and a very large number of French soldiers, who, at first sight, looked merely loiterers.

The patrol, of perhaps four hundred men, stood drawn up under arms, waiting for the word to march.