The Ship-Dwellers: A Story of a Happy CruisePaine, Albert Bigelow
General
The Ship-Dwellers: A Story of a Happy Cruise
Paine, Albert Bigelow
Middle East -- Description and travel
The upper part of the Cathedral can only be comprehended in the single
word "gorgeous." To attempt to put into sentences any impressions of its
lavish ceiling and decorations and furnishings would be to cheapen a
thing which, though ornate, is not cheap and does not look so. There are
paintings by Correggio and other Italian masters, and rare sacred
statuary, and there is a solid silver altar rail which Napoleon did not
carry off because a thoughtful priest quickly gave it a coat of
lampblack when he heard the soldiers coming.
The original keys of Jerusalem and several other holy places are said to
be in one of the chapels, and in another is a thorn from the Saviour's
crown, the stones with which St. Stephen was martyred, and some
apostolic bones. These things are as likely to be here as anywhere, and
one of the right hands of John the Baptist, encased in a gold glove, was
here when Napoleon came. Napoleon took up the hand and slipped off a
magnificent diamond ring from one of the fingers. Then he slipped the
ring on his own finger and tossed the hand aside.
"Keep the carrion," he said.
They hate the memory of Napoleon in Malta to this day.
The ceiling of the church is a mass of gold and color, and there are
chapels along the sides, each trying to outdo the next in splendor. I am
going to stop description right here, for I could do nothing with the
details.
I have mentioned that services were in progress, but it did not seem to
interfere with our sight-seeing. It would in America, but it doesn't in
Malta. There was chanting around the altar, and there were worshippers
kneeling all about, but our guide led us among them and over them as if
they had not existed. It seemed curious to us that he could do this,
that we could follow him unmolested. We tried to get up some feeling of
delicacy in the matter, and to make some show of reluctance, but he led
us and drove us along relentlessly, and did not seem to fear the
consequences.
We got outside at last and were nailed by a frowsy man who wanted to
sell one grimy postal card of the Chapel of Bones. We didn't want the
card, but we said he might take us to the chapel if he knew the way.
Nothing so good as that ever came into his life before. From a mendicant
seller of one wretched card, worth a penny at most, he had suddenly
blossomed into the guide of two American tourists. The card disappeared.
With head erect he led the way as one having received knighthood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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