at gnats, and
this should explain many passages that puzzle us in the work both of
our clerics and our scientists. I, not being a man of science,
still continue to do what I said I did in Alps and Sanctuaries, and
make it a rule to earnestly and patiently and carefully swallow a
few of the smallest gnats I can find several times a day, as the
best astringent for the throat I know of.

The thirteenth chapel is the Marriage Feast at Cana of Galilee.
This is the best chapel as a work of art; indeed, it is the only one
which can claim to be taken quite seriously. Not that all the
figures are very good; those to the left of the composition are
commonplace enough; nor are the Christ and the giver of the feast at
all remarkable; but the ten or dozen figures of guests and
attendants at the right-hand end of the work are as good as anything
of their kind can be, and remind me so strongly of Tabachetti that I
cannot doubt they were done by someone who was indirectly influenced
by that great sculptor's work. It is not likely that Tabachetti was
alive long after 1640, by which time he would have been about eighty
years old; and the foundations of this chapel were not laid till
about 1690; the statues are probably a few years later; they can
hardly, therefore, be by one who had even studied under Tabachetti;
but until I found out the dates, and went inside the chapel to see
the way in which the figures had been constructed, I was inclined to
think they might be by Tabachetti himself, of whom, indeed, they are
not unworthy. On examining the figures I found them more heavily
constructed than Tabachetti's are, with smaller holes for taking out
superfluous clay, and more finished on the off-sides. Marocco says
the sculptor is not known. I looked in vain for any date or
signature. Possibly the right-hand figures (for the left-hand ones
can hardly be by the same hand) may be by some sculptor from Crea,
which is at no very great distance from Oropa, who was penetrated by
Tabachetti's influence; but whether as regards action and concert
with one another, or as regards excellence in detail, I do not see
how anything can be more realistic, and yet more harmoniously
composed. The placing of the musicians in a minstrels' gallery
helps the effect; these musicians are six in number, and the other
figures are twenty-three. Under the table, between Christ and the
giver of the feast, there is a cat.

The fourteenth chapel, the Assumptio