The Porta del Popolo swarmed with life.

The merry-makers, who had spent the feast-day outside the walls, were now thronging in; a party of horsemen were entering beneath the arch; a travelling carriage had been drawn up just within the verge, and was passing through the villainous ordeal of the papal custom-house.

In the broad piazza, too, there was a motley crowd.
But the stream of Miriam's trouble kept its way through this flood of human life, and neither mingled with it nor was turned aside.

With a sad kind of feminine ingenuity, she found a way to kneel before her tyrant undetected, though in full sight of all the people, still beseeching him for freedom, and in vain..