The sarcophagi that served
them for coffins could not now be put to a more appropriate use than as
wine-coolers in a modern dining-room; and it would heighten the enjoyment
of a festival to look at them.
We would gladly have stayed much longer; but it was drawing towards
sunset, and the evening, though bright, was unusually cool, so we drove
home; and on the way, Mr. Story told us of the horrible practices of the
modern Romans with their dead,--how they place them in the church, where,
at midnight, they are stripped of their last rag of funeral attire, put
into the rudest wooden coffins, and thrown into a trench,--a half-mile,
for instance, of promiscuous corpses. This is the fate of all, except
those whose friends choose to pay an exorbitant sum to have them buried
under the pavement of a church. The Italians have an excessive dread of
corpses, and never meddle with those of their nearest and dearest
relatives. They have a horror of death, too, especially of sudden death,
and most particularly of apoplexy; and no wonder, as it gives no time for
the last rites of the Church, and so exposes them to a fearful risk of
perdition forever.
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