It Was With Something Like A Cry
For Pardon Of My Previous Brutality That I Now Closed With His Unabated
Demand of a three-franc fee, and we went with him wherever he would,
from one holy edifice to another
Of those that constitute the church;
but I will not ask the reader to follow us in the cab which he mounted
into with us, but which would not conveniently hold four. Let him look
it all up in the admirably compendious pages of Hare and Murray, and
believe, if he can, that I missed nothing of that history and mystery.
If I speak merely of the marvellous baptistery, it is doubtless not
because the other parts were not equally worthy of my wonder, but
because I would not have even an enemy miss the music of the singing
doors, mighty valves of bronze which, when they turn upon their hinges,
emit a murmur of grief or a moan of remorse for whatever heathen uses
they once served the wicked Caracalla at his baths. Not to have heard
their rich harmony would he like not having heard the echo in the
baptistery of Pisa, a life-long loss.
Heaven knows how punctiliously our guide would have acquainted us with
every particular of the Lateran group, which for a thousand years before
the Vatican was the home of the popes. We begged off from this and that,
but even indolence like mine would not spare itself the sight of the
Scala Santa.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 240 of 353
Words from 65870 to 66120
of 97259
