e, ladies with long braids bound in nets of
silk--crowded to see themselves embalmed in tempera for curious
after-centuries to gaze upon.

THE ASSISSI OF ST. FRANCIS[29]

BY HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE

On the summit of an abrupt height, over a double row of arcades, appears
the monastery; at its base a torrent plows the soil, winding off in the
distance between banks of boulders; beyond is the old town prolonging
itself on the ridge of the mountain. We ascend slowly under the burning
sun, and suddenly, at the end of a court surrounded by slender columns,
enter within the obscurity of the cathedral. It is unequalled; before
having seen it one has no idea of the art and the genius of the Middle
Ages. Append to it Dante and the "Fioretti" of St. Francis, and it
becomes the masterpiece of mystic Christianity.

There are three churches, one above the other, all of them arranged
around the tomb of St. Francis. Over this venerated body, which the
people regard as ever living and absorbed in prayer at the bottom of an
inaccessible cave, the edifice has arisen and gloriously flowered like
an architectural shrine. The lowest is a crypt, dark as a sepulcher,
into which the visitors descend with torches; pilgrims keep close to the
dripping walls and grope along in order to reach the grating.

Here is the tomb, in a pale, dim light, similar to that of limbo. A few
brass lamps, almost without lights, burn here eternally like stars lost
in mournful obscurity. The ascending smoke clings to the arches, and the
heavy odor of the tapers mingles with that of the cave. The guide trims
his torch; and the sudden flash in this horrible darkness, above the
bones of a corpse, is like one of Dante's visions. Here is the mystic
grave of a saint who, in the midst of corruption and worms, beholds his
slimy dungeon of earth filled with the supernatural radiance of the
Savior.

But that which can not be represented by words is the middle church, a
long, low spiracle supported by small, round arches curving in the
half-shadow, and whose voluntary depression makes one instinctively
bend his knees. A coating of somber blue and of reddish bands starred
with gold, a marvelous embroidery of ornaments, wreaths, delicate
scroll-work, leaves, and painted figures, covers the arches and ceilings
with its harmonious multitude; the eye is overwhelmed by it; a
population of forms and tints lives on its vaults; I would not exchange
this cavern for all th