Book The Second: Riches Chapter 19 The Storming of the Castle in the Air

But, for all this, he worked at his castle in the intervals.

And now, fragments of ruinous enclosure, yawning window-gap and crazy
wall, deserted houses, leaking wells, broken water-tanks, spectral
cypress-trees, patches of tangled vine, and the changing of the track to
a long, irregular, disordered lane where everything was crumbling away,
from the unsightly buildings to the jolting road--now, these objects
showed that they were nearing Rome.

And now, a sudden twist and stoppage
of the carriage inspired Mr Dorrit with the mistrust that the brigand
moment was come for twisting him into a ditch and robbing him; until,
letting down the glass again and looking out, he perceived himself
assailed by nothing worse than a funeral procession, which came
mechanically chaunting by, with an indistinct show of dirty vestments,
lurid torches, swinging censers, and a great cross borne before a
priest.

He was an ugly priest by torchlight; of a lowering aspect, with
an overhanging brow; and as his eyes met those of Mr Dorrit, looking
bareheaded out of the carriage, his lips, moving as they chaunted,
seemed to threaten that important traveller; likewise the action of
his hand, which was in fact his manner of returning the traveller's
salutation, seemed to come in aid of that menace. So thought Mr Dorrit,
made fanciful by the weariness of building and travelling, as the priest
drifted past him, and the procession straggled away, taking its dead
along with it.