irway
conducting to the Court of San Damaso; but to reach the Sixtine Chapel it
was necessary to follow a long gallery, with columns on either hand, and
ascend the royal staircase, the Scala Regia. And in this realm of the
gigantic, where every dimension is exaggerated and replete with
overpowering majesty, Pierre's breath came short as he ascended the broad
steps.

He was much surprised on entering the Sixtine Chapel, for it at first
seemed to him small, a sort of rectangular and lofty hall, with a
delicate screen of white marble separating the part where guests
congregate on the occasion of great ceremonies from the choir where the
cardinals sit on simple oaken benches, while the inferior prelates remain
standing behind them. On a low platform to the right of the soberly
adorned altar is the pontifical throne; while in the wall on the left
opens the narrow singing gallery with its balcony of marble. And for
everything suddenly to spread out and soar into the infinite one must
raise one's head, allow one's eyes to ascend from the huge fresco of the
Last Judgment, occupying the whole of the end wall, to the paintings
which cover the vaulted ceiling down to the cornice extending between the
twelve windows of white glass, six on either hand.

Fortunately there were only three or four quiet tourists there; and
Pierre at once perceived Narcisse Habert occupying one of the cardinals'
seats above the steps where the train-bearers crouch. Motionless, and
with his head somewhat thrown back, the young man seemed to be in
ecstasy. But it was not the work of Michael Angelo that he thus
contemplated. His eyes never strayed from one of the earlier frescoes
below the cornice; and on recognising the priest he contented himself
with murmuring: "Ah! my friend, just look at the Botticelli." Then, with
dreamy eyes, he relapsed into a state of rapture.

Pierre, for his part, had received a great shock both in heart and in
mind, overpowered as he was by the superhuman genius of Michael Angelo.
The rest vanished; there only remained, up yonder, as in a limitless
heaven, the extraordinary creations of the master's art. That which at
first surprised one was that the painter should have been the sole
artisan of the mighty work. No marble cutters, no bronze workers, no
gilders, no one of another calling had intervened. The painter with his
brush had sufficed for all--for the pilasters, columns, and cornices of
marble, for the statues and the