[At this point in the book a music score is given]
How this would sound upon these stairs, if they would leave the
church-door open. It is said in Murray's handbook that formerly
the corpses which are now under the arch, used to be placed in a
sitting position upon the stairs, and the peasants would crown them
with flowers. Fancy twilight or moonlight on these stairs, with
the corpses sitting among the withered flowers and snow, and the
pealing of a great organ.
After ascending the steps that lead towards the skeletons, we turn
again sharp round to the left, and come upon another noble flight -
broad and lofty, and cut in great measure from the living rock.
At the top of this flight there are two sets of Lombard portals,
both of them very fine, but in such darkness and so placed that it
was impossible to get a drawing of them in detail. After passing
through them, the staircase turns again, and, as far as I can
remember, some twenty or thirty steps bring one up to the level of
the top of the arch which forms the recess where the corpses are.
Here there is another beautiful Lombard doorway, with a small
arcade on either side which I thought English, rather than Italian,
in character. An impression was produced upon both of us that this
doorway and the arcade on either side were by a different architect
from the two lower archways, and from the inside of the church; or
at any rate, that the details of the enrichment were cut by a
different mason, or gang of masons. I think, however, the whole
doorway is in a later style, and must have been put in after some
fire had destroyed the earlier one.
Opening the door, which by day is always unlocked, we found
ourselves in the church itself. As I have said, it is of pure
Lombard architecture, and very good of its kind; I do not think it
has been touched since the beginning of the eleventh century,
except that it has been re-roofed and the pitch of the roof
altered. At the base of the most westerly of the three piers that
divide the nave from the aisles, there crops out a small piece of
the living rock; this is at the end farthest from the choir. It is
not likely that Giovanni Vincenzo's church reached east of this
point, for from this point onwards towards the choir the floor is
artificially supported, and the supporting structure is due
entirely to Hugo de Montboissier. The part of the original church
which still remains is perhaps the wall, which forms the western
limit of the present church.
