aimed.

"Why, yes," said I, "she has her good looks, poor soul!"

"Why 'poor soul'?"

"She is an imbecile, or nearly so," said I, fitting the key in the lock.

We entered the church. And here let me say that, although I furnished
you at the time of their discovery with a description of the frescoes
and the ruder drawings which overlay them, you can scarcely imagine the
grotesque and astonishing _coup d'oeil_ presented by the two series.
To begin with the frescoes, or original series. One, as you know,
represented the Crucifixion. The head of the Saviour bore a large crown
of gilded thorns, and from the wound in His left side flowed a
continuous stream of red gouts of blood, extraordinarily intense in
colour (and intensity of colour is no common quality in
fresco-painting). At the foot of the cross stood a Roman soldier, with
two female figures in dark-coloured drapery a little to the right, and
in the background a man clad in a loose dark upper coat, which reached a
little below the knees.

The same man reappeared in the second picture, alone, but carrying a
tall staff or hunting spear, and advancing up a road, at the top of
which stood a circular building with an arched doorway and, within the
doorway, the head of a lion. The jaws of this beast were open and
depicted with the same intense red as the Saviour's blood.

Close beside this, but further to the east, was a large ship, under
sail, which from her slanting position appeared to be mounting over a
long swell of sea. This vessel had four masts; the two foremost
furnished with yards and square sails, the others with lateen-shaped
sails, after the Greek fashion; her sides were decorated with six gaily
painted bands or streaks, each separately charged with devices--a golden
saltire on a green ground, a white crescent on a blue, and so on; and
each masthead bore a crown with a flag or streamer fluttering beneath.

Of the frescoes these alone were perfect, but fragments of others were
scattered over the wall, and in particular I must mention a group of
detached human limbs lying near the ship--a group rendered conspicuous
by an isolated right hand and arm drawn on a larger scale than the rest.
A gilded circlet adorned the arm, which was flexed at the elbow, the
hand horizontally placed, the forefinger extended towards the west in
the direction of the picture of the Crucifixion, and the thumb shut
within the palm beneath the other three fingers.

So much f