Even With The Church Of The Capuchins, Which We Lived Opposite, I Was
Dilatory, Though In My Mediaeval Days It Had Been One Of The First
Places To Which I Hurried.
In those days everybody said you must be sure
and go to the Capuchins', because Guide's "St. Michael and the Enemy"
was there, and still more because the wonderful bone mosaics in the
cemetery under the church were not on any account to be missed.
I
suspect that in both these matters I had then a very crude taste, but it
was not from my greater refinement that I now let the Capuchin church go
on long un-revisited. It was, for one thing, too instantly and
constantly accessible across the street there; and it is well known
human nature is such that it will not seek the line of the least
resistance as long as it can help. Besides, I could hardly believe that
it was really the Capuchin church which I had once so hastened to see,
and I neglected it almost two months, contenting myself with the display
of those hand-bills on the convent walls, spreading largely and
glaringly incongruous over it. When I did go I found the Guido
ridiculous, of course, in the painter's imagination of the archangel as
a sort of dancing figure in a _tableau vivant,_ and yet of a sublime
authority in the execution. To be more honest, I had little feeling
about it and less knowledge.
It was not so cold in the church as I had expected; and in the
succession of side chapels, beginning with the St. Michael's and opening
into one another, we found a kind of domesticity close upon cosiness,
which we were enjoying for its own sake, when we were aware of a pale,
gentle young girl who seemed to be alone there.
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