_. The service was
I know not what. In the middle of the nave stood twelve large chairs
arranged in a semicircle; on these chairs sat twelve canons, like a row
of mandarins, each with his little white patch like a silver dollar on
the crown of his black head. Five or six minor dignitaries, deacons,
precentors, or something of that sort, were droning out monotonous
recitations like the buzzing of so many humble-bees in the warm summer
air. The dean or provost sat in the central biggest chair of all. His
face was rosy, and he wiped it from time to time with a red
handkerchief; his chin was double or perhaps treble; he had evidently
dined, and would or might have slept but for a pile of snuff on his
chair arm, with continual refreshments from which he kept his faculties
alive. I sat patiently till it was over, and the twelve holy men rose
and went their way. I could then stroll about at leisure. The pictures
were of the usual paltry kind. On the chancel arch stood the royal arms
of Spain, as the lion and the unicorn used to stand in our parish
churches till the High Church clergy mistook them for Erastian wild
beasts. At the right side of the altar was the monument which I had come
in search of; a marble tablet fixed against the wall, and on it a poorly
executed figure in high relief, with a ruff about its neck and features
which might be meant for anyone and for no one in particular. Somewhere
near me there were lying I believed and could hope the mortal remains of
the discoverer of the New World. An inscription said so. There was
written:

O Restos y Imagen del grande Colon
Mil siglos durad guardados en la Urna
Y en remembranza de nuestra Nacion.

The court poet, or whoever wrote the lines, was as poor an artist in
verse as the sculptor in stone. The image of the grande Colon is
certainly not 'guarded in the urn,' since you see it on the wall before
your eyes. The urn, if urn there be, with the 'relics' in it, must be
under the floor. Columbus and his brother Diego were originally buried
to the right and left of the altar in the cathedral of St. Domingo. When
St. Domingo was abandoned, a commission was appointed to remove the body
of Christophe to Havana. They did remove _a_ body, but St. Domingo
insists that it was Diego that was taken away, that Christophe remains
where he was, and that if Spain wants him Spain must pay for him. I
followed the canons into the sacristy where they were unrobing. I did
not