You Will
Naturally Want To See This, Not Only Because There In The Cloister (As
The Ladies Can Ascertain At
The window let into the wall for their
dangerous eyes to peer through from the outside) is the successor of
The
orange-tree transplanted from the Holy Land by St. Dominic six or seven
hundred years ago; not only because one of the doors of the church,
covered with Bible stories, is thought the oldest wood-carving in the
world, but also because there will be sitting in his white robes on a
bench beside the nave an aged Dominican monk reading some holy book,
with his spectacles fallen forward on his nose and his cowl fallen back
on his neck, and his wide tonsure gleaming glacially in the pale light,
whom nothing in the church or its visitors can distract from his
devotions.
It is very, very cold in there, but he probably would not, if he could,
follow you into the warm outer world and on into the garden of the
Knights, who came here after they had misruled Malta for centuries and
finally rendered a facile submission to General Bonaparte of the French
Republican army in 1798. Their fixing here cannot be called anything so
vigorous as their last stand; but, without specific reference to the
easy-chairs in their chapter-house, it may be fitly called their last
seat; and, if it is true that none of plebeian blood may enjoy the
order's privileges, the place will afford another of those satisfactions
which the best of all possible worlds is always offering its admirers.
Even if one were disposed to moralize the comfortable end of the poor
Knights harshly, one must admit that their view of Rome is one of the
unrivalled views, and that the glimpse of St. Peter's through the
key-hole of their garden-gate is little short of tin-rivalled.
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