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Governor Serafini stepped forward. "Majesties!" he boomed. "In my capacity as Governor of Vatican City I have the high honor, in the name of my Sovereign. His Holiness Pius XI, to extend to you a welcome." They remounted their limousine.
Silver trumpets fanfared. The royal procession moved across St. Peter's Square. Like medieval statues, a platoon of the famed Swiss Guards stood at attention in the scarlet, green and yellow uniforms designed for them by Michael Angelo. Sunlight gleamed from the polished steel of halberd, morion, breastplate, pauldron, rerebrace. Under the Bernini colonnade, the Palatine Guards, more "efficient section of the Pope's army, snapped modern rifles to the present.
In the courtyard of St. Damascus came a final disembarkment from the royal motors. Self-conscious reporters in swallowtail coats noted in Their Majesties' party the fascinating brown beard of Italian Foreign Minister Dino Grandi, "The Right Hand of II Duce," and the brigand-like black mustache of Cesare Maria di Vecchi, Count di Val Cismon. Italian Ambassador to the Holy See. Swiss drummers in velvet hats thumped yellow-painted drums. Swiss bandsmen blared the Italian royal anthem (the first time that such music had echoed from the Vatican's sacred walls), and followed it with the Papal hymn Inno Pontificio.
There is no sovereign in the world who has so many personal servants as the Pope. In the inner courtyard of St. Damascus this fact was gorgeously demonstrated to little King Vittorio Emanuele and his tall white spouse. Here was a final detachment of the Papal Army, elaborately upholstered Gendarmes in fur busbies, varnished jack boots, flashing sabres. In a knot of red, pink, crimson, purple and white, stood the Grand Master of the Holy Hospice, the Secret Almoner, the Pope's Sacristan, Secret Chamberlains, Knights of the Cape and Sword, Noble Guards, Cardinals, Lay Gentlemen-in-Waiting.
To the King and Queen it was all new and strange. Although the corridors they marched through, the stairs they climbed, were familiar to most Romans, Their Majesties had only seen them in photographs. Right and left they peered like tourists. In the Hall of St. John, antechamber to the Sola del Tronetto (room of the "little throne"), the royal and papal procession stopped. Two bussolanti (official door openers), in scarlet damask knee breeches, flung wide the doors. There, smiling benignly through his steel rimmed spectacles, stood the Pontifex Maximus.
Courtiers drew back. King and Queen advanced, dropped on one knee, kissed the Pope's ring.
For months, every move, every gesture of this auspicious tableau had been argued and arranged between committees of papal and royal experts in etiquette. Chief rub: Papal etiquette demanded that visiting sovereigns should kiss the Pope's toe. Vittorio Emanuele, or Benito Mussolini, found this unbecoming to the dignity of the House of Savoy (TIME, Nov. 25). Hence the compromise, the one-kneed genuflection. His Holiness did not leave Their Majesties kneeling long. Quickly he motioned them to their feet, led them to two armchairs placed on a level with and on either side of his "Little Throne,"* which was under a velvet canopy.