s sprout round the Byzantine
pillar which carries a cross over a pine-cone, has invaded the flat-roofed
nave and the wide aisles, separated from it by a single colonnade. A
greenish mildew marks the fissures in the walls, rent here and there
by landslips and earthquakes. The cipolline columns carrying the round
arches on their square capitals are lustreless, and their green-veined
marble looks like long-buried wood. The mosaic pavement stretches its
discs and volutes of porphyry and serpentine or yellowed Parian marble,
a tarnished and uneven carpet, to the greenish-white marble steps of
the chancel. The mosaics have long fallen out of the circle of the apse;
and the frescoes, painted by some obscure follower of Giotto, have left
only a green vague stain over the arches of the aisle. Pictures or
statues there are none, and no conspicuous sepulchre. Only, over the low
entrance, a colossal wooden crucifix of the thirteenth century hangs at
an angle from the wall, a painted Christ, stretching his writhing livid
limbs in agony opposite the high altar. It was in this stately and
desolate church, under the misty light that pours in through the wide
windows of grey coarse glass, and on the marble altar, facing that
effigy of the dying Saviour, that, in derision as it were of the miracle
which the church commemorates on that feast-day, Domenico and Filarete
were about to offer up to the demons Apollo, Bacchus, and Jove the
freshly consecrated wafer, the very body and blood of Christ.

But an accomplice of theirs, a certain monk well versed in magic, whom
they employed in sundry details of devil-raising, on the score that they
were seeking treasure hidden in the church, had suddenly been seized
with qualms of conscience. Instead of appearing at the appointed time
alone, and bearing certain necessaries of his art, he kept them waiting
a full hour, until they began their proceedings without his assistance.
And even as Domenico was reaching his companion the ostensorium, which
had remained on the altar after the morning's mass, the church was
surrounded by the officers of the Podesta, on horseback, and by a crowd
of monks and priests, and rabble who had followed them. Of these persons,
not a few affirmed in after years, that, as they arrived at the church
door, they had heard sounds of flutes and timbrels, and mocking songs
filling the place; and that the devil, dressed in skins and garlands
like a wild man of the woods, had cleft t