The Marble Faun Volume 1 - Page 112/130

They entered the nave. The interior of the church was of moderate

compass, but of good architecture, with a vaulted roof over the nave,

and a row of dusky chapels on either side of it instead of the customary

side-aisles. Each chapel had its saintly shrine, hung round with

offerings; its picture above the altar, although closely veiled, if by

any painter of renown; and its hallowed tapers, burning continually, to

set alight the devotion of the worshippers. The pavement of the nave was

chiefly of marble, and looked old and broken, and was shabbily patched

here and there with tiles of brick; it was inlaid, moreover, with

tombstones of the mediaeval taste, on which were quaintly sculptured

borders, figures, and portraits in bas-relief, and Latin epitaphs,

now grown illegible by the tread of footsteps over them. The church

appertains to a convent of Capuchin monks; and, as usually happens when

a reverend brotherhood have such an edifice in charge, the floor seemed

never to have been scrubbed or swept, and had as little the aspect of

sanctity as a kennel; whereas, in all churches of nunneries, the maiden

sisterhood invariably show the purity of their own hearts by the virgin

cleanliness and visible consecration of the walls and pavement.

As our friends entered the church, their eyes rested at once on a

remarkable object in the centre of the nave. It was either the actual

body, or, as might rather have been supposed at first glance, the

cunningly wrought waxen face and suitably draped figure of a dead monk.

This image of wax or clay-cold reality, whichever it might be, lay on

a slightly elevated bier, with three tall candles burning on each side,

another tall candle at the head, and another at the foot. There was

music, too; in harmony with so funereal a spectacle. From beneath

the pavement of the church came the deep, lugubrious strain of a De

Profundis, which sounded like an utterance of the tomb itself; so

dismally did it rumble through the burial vaults, and ooze up among the

flat gravestones and sad epitaphs, filling the church as with a gloomy

mist.

"I must look more closely at that dead monk before we leave the church,"

remarked the sculptor. "In the study of my art, I have gained many a

hint from the dead which the living could never have given me."

"I can well imagine it," answered Miriam. "One clay image is readily

copied from another. But let us first see Guido's picture. The light is

favorable now."

Accordingly, they turned into the first chapel on the right hand, as you

enter the nave; and there they beheld,--not the picture, indeed,--but

a closely drawn curtain. The churchmen of Italy make no scruple of

sacrificing the very purpose for which a work of sacred art has been

created; that of opening the way; for religious sentiment through the

quick medium of sight, by bringing angels, saints, and martyrs down

visibly upon earth; of sacrificing this high purpose, and, for aught

they know, the welfare of many souls along with it, to the hope of a

paltry fee. Every work by an artist of celebrity is hidden behind a

veil, and seldom revealed, except to Protestants, who scorn it as an

object of devotion, and value it only for its artistic merit.