She Asked, In Our
Unmistakable Native Accents, If We Were Going To See The Capuchin
Mosaics In Their Place Below; And One Of Us Said, Promptly, No, Indeed;
But Relented At The Shadow Of Disappointment That Came Over The Girl's
Face, And Asked, Was She Going?
The girl said, Oh, she guessed she could
see them some other time; and then she who had spoken ordered him who
had not spoken to go with her.
I do not know what question of propriety
engaged them with reference to her going alone with the handsome young
monk waiting to accompany her; but he was certainly too handsome for a
monk of any age. We followed him, however, and I had my usual nausea on
viewing the decoration of the ceilings and walls of the place below; it
always makes me sick to go into that place; between realizing that I am
of the same make as the brothers composing those mosaics, and trying to
imagine what the intricate patterns will do at the Resurrection Day, I
cannot command myself. Neither am I supported by the sight of some
skeletons, the raw material of that grewsome artistry, deposited whole
in their coffins in the niches next the ground, though their skulls
smile so reassuringly from their cowls; their cheeriness cannot make me
like them. But my companion seemed to be merely interested; and I
fancied her deciding that it all quite came up to her expectations,
while I translated for her from the monk that the dead used to be left
in the hallowed earth from Jerusalem covering the ground before they
were taken up and decoratively employed, but that since the Italian
occupation of Rome the art had fallen into abeyance.
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