The Marble Faun Volume 1 - Page 118/130

The arrangement of the unearthed skeletons is what makes the special

interest of the cemetery. The arched and vaulted walls of the burial

recesses are supported by massive pillars and pilasters made of

thigh-bones and skulls; the whole material of the structure appears

to be of a similar kind; and the knobs and embossed ornaments of this

strange architecture are represented by the joints of the spine, and

the more delicate tracery by the Smaller bones of the human frame. The

summits of the arches are adorned with entire skeletons, looking as if

they were wrought most skilfully in bas-relief. There is no possibility

of describing how ugly and grotesque is the effect, combined with a

certain artistic merit, nor how much perverted ingenuity has been shown

in this queer way, nor what a multitude of dead monks, through how many

hundred years, must have contributed their bony framework to build

up these great arches of mortality. On some of the skulls there are

inscriptions, purporting that such a monk, who formerly made use of

that particular headpiece, died on such a day and year; but vastly the

greater number are piled up indistinguishably into the architectural

design, like the many deaths that make up the one glory of a victory.

In the side walls of the vaults are niches where skeleton monks sit or

stand, clad in the brown habits that they wore in life, and labelled

with their names and the dates of their decease. Their skulls (some

quite bare, and others still covered with yellow skin, and hair that

has known the earth-damps) look out from beneath their hoods, grinning

hideously repulsive. One reverend father has his mouth wide open, as if

he had died in the midst of a howl of terror and remorse, which perhaps

is even now screeching through eternity. As a general thing, however,

these frocked and hooded skeletons seem to take a more cheerful view of

their position, and try with ghastly smiles to turn it into a jest. But

the cemetery of the Capuchins is no place to nourish celestial hopes:

the soul sinks forlorn and wretched under all this burden of dusty

death; the holy earth from Jerusalem, so imbued is it with mortality,

has grown as barren of the flowers of Paradise as it is of earthly weeds

and grass. Thank Heaven for its blue sky; it needs a long, upward gaze

to give us back our faith. Not here can we feel ourselves immortal,

where the very altars in these chapels of horrible consecration are

heaps of human bones.

Yet let us give the cemetery the praise that it deserves. There is no

disagreeable scent, such as might have been expected from the decay of

so many holy persons, in whatever odor of sanctity they may have taken

their departure. The same number of living monks would not smell half so

unexceptionably.