r throats hoarse with
cursing--gamble and fight and snarl and sleep, hour after hour,
clashing their bruised _centesimi_ upon the marble ledges of the
church porch. And the images of Christ and his angels look down upon
it continually.

That we may not enter the church out of the midst of the horror of
this, let us turn aside under the portico which looks toward the sea,
and passing round within the two massive pillars brought from St. Jean
d'Acre,[40] we shall find the gate of the baptistery: let us enter
there. The heavy door closes behind us instantly; and the light and
the turbulence of the Piazzetta are together shut out by it.

[Footnote 40: More commonly known as Acre, a seaport on the Palestine
coast, captured by Crusaders in 1104, by Saladin in 1187, and
recaptured by the Crusaders in 1191. It was thenceforth held by the
Christians for exactly one hundred years, when it became the last
Christian stronghold in Palestine to yield. In 1797 Acre was
successfully defended by Sir Sidney Smith against Napoleon.]

We are in a low vaulted room; vaulted not with arches, but with small
cupolas starred with gold and checkered with gloomy figures: in the
center is a bronze font charged with rich bas-reliefs; a small figure
of the Baptist standing above it in a single ray of light, that
glances across the narrow room, dying as it falls from a window high
in the wall--and the first thing that it strikes, and the only thing
that it strikes brightly, is a tomb. We hardly know if it be a tomb
indeed: for it is like a narrow couch set beside the window,
low-roofed and curtained; so that it might seem, but that it has some
height above the pavement, to have been drawn toward the window, that
the sleeper might be wakened early--only there are two angels who have
drawn the curtain back, and are looking down upon him. Let us look
also and thank that gentle light that rests upon his forehead forever,
and dies away upon his breast.

The face is of a man in middle life, but there are two deep furrows
right across the forehead, dividing it like the foundations of a
tower; the height of it above is bound by the fillet of the ducal
cap. The rest of the features are singularly small and delicate, the
lips sharp--perhaps the sharpness of death being added to that of the
natural lines; but there is a sweet smile upon them, and a deep
serenity upon the whole countenance. The roof of the canopy above has
been blue, filled with stars; benea