To The Eyes In Which Its Sickbed Visits Have
Dried The Tears It Must Wear An Aspect Of Heavenly Pity And Beauty; And
I Am Very Willing To Believe That These Are The Eyes Which See It
Aright.
As it was, and taking it literally, it seemed far less
mechanical and unfeeling than the monk who pulled it out and pushed it
back on its wheeled platform.
But he must get tired of showing it to the
unbelievers who come out of curiosity, and very likely I should, if I
were in his place, as nonchalantly wipe across the glass front of the
shrine the card with the Bambino's legend printed in various languages
on it, which you may then buy with the blessing from the glass for
whatever you choose to give.
Where art and antiquity are so abundant as in Rome, the Bambino incident
is probably what the reader, when he has visited the Church of Ara Coeli
will chiefly remember, and I will not pretend to be any better than the
reader, though I will say that I have a persistent sense of something
important about the roof; and there are the Pinturrichio frescos, which
an old Sienese like me must have the taste for. The not easily praiseful
Hare says it is "one of the most interesting of Christian churches," and
without allowing that there are any other sorts of churches I may allow
that this is one of the least unlovely in Rome. Trinita de' Monti seemed
to be another, but only, I dare say, subjectively, because of the
exquisite pleasure we had one afternoon in March when we went into it
for the nuns' singing of the Benediction.
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