But She Had
Moments Of Her Own When Rome Could Not Rival Her - Such, For Instance, As
That When She
Invited us from the perishing frescos of her Campo Santo
to turn our eyes on the flower-strewn field of
Death which the cloisters
surrounded, and where in the hallowed earth which her galleys brought
from Jerusalem her children, in their several turns, used to sleep so
sweetly and safely.
The afternoon sunlight was prolonging the day there as well as it could,
and we should have liked to linger with it as late as it would, but
there were other places in Pisa calling us, and we must go. We found our
driver, and his black-eyed boy beside him on the box, waiting for us at
the cathedral door, and we seem to have left it pretty much to them
where we should go. They decided us, if we really left it to them,
mainly for the outside of things, so that we might see as much of Pisa
as possible; but it appears to have been their notion that we ought to
visit, at least, the inside of the Church of the Knights of St.
Stephen. I do not know whether I protested or not that I had abundantly
seen this already, but, at any rate, I am now glad that they took us
there. As every traveller will pretend to remember, the main business of
the knights was to fight the Barbary pirates, and the main business of
their church is now to serve as a repository of the prows of the galleys
and the flags which they took in their battles with the infidels.
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