“Well!” said Catesby, after some little pause, as if awaiting a remark
from his companion.
“‘Tis beautiful!” said Lothair. “Is it by Raffaelle?”
“No; by Fra Bartolomeo. But the countenance, do you remember ever having
met such a one?”
Lothair shook his head. Catesby took out another drawing, the same
subject, the Blessed Virgin. “By Giulio,” said the monsignore, and he
watched the face of Lothair, but it was listless.
Then he showed Lothair another, and another, and another. At last he
held before him one which was really by Raffaelle, and by which Lothair
was evidently much moved. His eye lit up, a blush suffused his pale
cheek, he took the drawing himself, and held it before his gaze with a
trembling hand.
“Yes I remember this,” he murmured, for it was one of those faces of
Greek beauty which the great painter not infrequently caught up at Rome.
The monsignore looked gently round and waved his hand, and immediately
arose the hymn to the Virgin in subdued strains of exquisite melody.
On the next morning, when Lothair woke, he found on the table, by his
side, the drawing of the Virgin in a sliding frame.
About this time the monsignore began to accustom Lothair to leave his
apartment, and, as he was not yet permitted to walk, Catesby introduced
what he called an English chair, in which Lothair was enabled to survey
a little the place which had been to him a refuge and a home. It seemed
a building of vast size, raised round an inner court with arcades
and windows, and, in the higher story where he resided, an apparently
endless number of chambers and galleries. One morning, in their
perambulations, the monsignore unlocked the door of a covered way which
had no light but from a lamp which guided their passage. The opposite
door at the end of this covered way opened into a church, but one of a
character different from any which Lothair had yet entered.
It had been raised during the latter of the sixteenth century by
Vignola, when, under the influence of the great Pagan revival, the
Christian church began to assume the character of an Olympian temple. A
central painted cupola of large but exquisite proportions, supported
by pilasters with gilded capitals, and angels of white marble springing
from golden brackets; walls incrusted with rare materials of every tint,
and altars supported by serpentine columns of agate and alabaster;
a blaze of pictures, and statues, and precious stones, and precious
metals, denoted one of the chief temples of the sacred brotherhood of
Jesus, raised when the great order had recognized that the views of
primitive and mediaeval Christianity, founded on the humility of man,
were not in accordance with the age of confidence in human energy, in
which they were destined to rise, and which they were determined to
direct.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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