And in the recesses of
the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest classes,
unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards; and
unregarded children,--every heavy glance of their young eyes full of
desperation and stony depravity, and their 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 towards the sea, and
passing round within the two massive pillars brought from St. Jean
d'Acre, 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.
SECTION XVI. We are in a low vaulted room; vaulted, not with arches, but
with small cupolas starred with gold, and chequered with gloomy figures:
in the centre 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.
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