Prevod

Beneath the starry mantle of a splendid, icy night, Rome stretches out, revealing here and there the dark patches of its mysterious gardens of cypresses and age-old laurels that have witnessed so much, and, in broader islands, the luminous whiteness of its monuments, shrouding the corpse of History.

Merry, boisterous crowds move through the streets. There are few carriages. The rich go on foot, mingling with the contadini, peasants from the countryside who have come to the great city bearing baskets of goods or gifts. Their picturesque, brightly colored rags distinguish them from the townspeople; their ringing cries resound in the air, clear and cold as crystal. They swarm, jostle, run: though they will not return home until dawn—as is quite certain—they want to witness the Pope’s prayer before the cradle of Gesú bambino in the Basilica of Trinitá dei Monti.

Yes, the Pope in person—not his statue, as today, but the man himself, in flesh and blood, for Rome still belongs to him—is about to kneel there before a crowd throbbing with enthusiasm, before the cradle where, on soft straw, the Child lies smiling. It is the night of December 24: already the deep bell of Santángelo is preparing to strike the air twelve times, and the papal carriage, without escort or pomp, draws up at the foot of the steps of Trinitá.

The Pope alights, assisted by his Chamberlains, calmly setting his foot on the carriage step. So artfully has the ceremony been arranged that, as Pius IX places his foot on the first stair, the first stroke of midnight sounds, slow and solemn, from every bell tower, every clock in Rome. The dramatic clamor of the hour rises majestically to heaven like a hosanna, enveloping in its magnificent, trembling waves of sound the Pontiff, who slowly ascends the steps, bestowing blessings amid the multitude that prostrates itself and murmurs fervent prayers of adoration. By the light of the stars, and the far brighter light of the thousands of tapers in the Basilica—illuminated from top to bottom, ablaze with light, adorned as for a feast, its doors thrown wide to admit the pressing crowd eager to behold the Pontiff—one can see, above the red, ermine-trimmed mozzetta that floats over his snowy robe, the Pope’s exquisitely handsome head, the pure, medal-like outline of his features, the sculptural beauty of his white hair, arranged like that of the ancient marble busts that fill the Museo degli Anticchi.

At last he enters the Basilica, crosses its aisles, and descends the golden stairway leading to the crypt; and while behind him the guards struggle to restrain the surging human torrent striving to reach the balustrade, the Pope stands alone in the open space below the multitude. An artist by instinct, with the measured gait of great solemnities, with a sense of bearing that he alone possesses to such a degree, Pius IX approaches the cradle, joins his ivory hands, and for a moment raises his eyes to heaven as though invoking the presence of God; he kneels, sinks into contemplation, and the folds of his pure white vestments spread about him, sculptural and classical as the alabaster drapery of a Canova.

The Child, the Bambino, sleeps naked and rosy, reclining on his golden mattress of silken straw. Throughout the Basilica no sound is heard but the soft sputtering of the tapers and the murmur of the prayer the Pope begins to offer up.—At the first words, the Child stirs with a fantastic life: the sculpture becomes flesh. His eyes half open, his little fists reach toward the Pope as they would toward a loving grandfather, eager to be fondled. Sitting up in the straw, he calls to the Pontiff, who prays on, yet thinks he feels that his knees are no longer resting on the crimson velvet cushions, that something is lifting his elbows and drawing them away from the carved prie-dieu. Light and almost fluid, his body has no weight; he floats peacefully in an atmosphere of gold and light, made of the burning, sparkling particles shed by the tapers.—The cradle has vanished; the Child stands tall, grown now into an adolescent; and in place of childish grace, his face bears the marks of meditation, the shadow of thought. Around the fifteen-year-old Jesus, emerging from the walls of the crypt, which seem to sweat them forth, dozens of children gather, other Bambinos, but ugly, stunted, filthy, wrapped in rags or naked, their wasted frames exposed. Dozens at first; then hundreds; then thousands, millions, a swarm so countless, an army so infinite, that the walls of the crypt burst apart, those of the Basilica, those of Rome, those of anything that might seek to contain the spreading horde of the wretched. It stretches across a boundless plain, and its maggot-like seething surrounds Gesú, who has imperceptibly become a full-grown man: now he has a forked beard and curly chestnut hair; now his face has acquired a manly gravity. And still they come, ragged and bare-fleshed, crippled, sick, starving, sorrowful, from every point of the horizon, from every corner of the earth. They weep with hunger; they shiver with cold; they moan in their abandonment; they display their sores; they clutch at Christ’s seamless robe; they seek shelter beneath his feet, to rest against his breast, to cling to his pale, luminous hands. They stink, and the pungent reek of their misery envelops and suffocates the Pope, still at prayer.

The figure of Christ is hidden for a moment; thick darkness rises from the earth and falls from the heavens, joining its mourning veils. The Pontiff is afraid: the darkness blinds him, and within it curses quiver and sobs throb. Lightning flashes; upright on a hill appears the Cross, upon which the Martyr’s naked body gleams white, striped with welts from the scourging and streaked with black blood. His livid lips stir; the Pope breaks off his prayer, grows bewildered, dissolves in adoration, longs to leave himself behind the better to hear and drink in the divine word; and the Crucified—directing his already clouding gaze toward the ocean of creatures seething below, gaunt, numb with cold, moaning, suffering, abused, wronged, forsaken—says to the Pope, in a voice that resounds urbi et orbi:

“For them.”