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Soon this street made a turning, where there was a good bronze statue to some dignitary or other, and I caught a glimpse of that wondrous tower of the famous Hôtel de Ville, the mate to that at Louvain, and soon I was beneath its Gothic walls, bearing row upon row of niches, empty now, but once containing effigies of the powerful lords and ladies of Flanders.
It was, however, no part of Mazzolin's policy to allow him for one moment to forget the reverence due the marble images that looked so calmly down from their niches, and with a stern glance he pointed to them, crossing himself as he did so. "Señor Austin is in the Calaboose," he said, after a pause. Mazzolin started, and looked keenly at him, as if striving to read his inmost thoughts.
"I have bought to-day, for five pounds, the front of the porch of the Church of St. James. It was going to be entirely destroyed. It is a low arch with tracery and niches, which ivy, and the Erba della Madonna, will grow over beautifully, wherever I rebuild it."
There they sat in niches which were covered with velvet, and began to cool themselves. Silence reigned for a time. Vinicius looked awhile thoughtfully at a bronze faun which, bending over the arm of a nymph, was seeking her lips eagerly with his lips. "He is right," said the young man. "That is what is best in life." "More or less!
The buttresses separating it from the aisle are decorated with six storeys of niches, two to each storey, except the lowest, which contains only one. The east window has an ogee gable above it, topped by a curious pierced pinnacle at present in process of restoration. The ends, both of the aisles and of the choir itself, are square, and do not reveal the roof behind them.
Left Sullo, and travelled through a country beautiful beyond imagination, with all the possible diversities of rock, sometimes towering up like ruined castles, spires, pyramids, &c. We passed one place so like a ruined Gothic abbey, that we halted a little, before we could satisfy ourselves that the niches, windows, ruined staircase, &c. were all natural rock.
These pilasters were to have between one and another a space of about three braccia, and in each of these spaces was to be a niche four braccia and a half in height, to contain statues, by way of accompaniment to the great niche in the middle of the façade and the two at the sides; in each of which niches Baccio wished to place three statues.
Stephen had never before seen it open, and descending one or two steps stooped to look under the arch. The vault appeared to be crowded with coffins, with the exception of an open central space, which had been necessarily kept free for ingress and access to the sides, round three of which the coffins were stacked in stone bins or niches.
Cunning niches there were, half concealing and half revealing long-necked Chinese jars; and odd little carven tables bore strangely fashioned vessels of silver. There was a cabinet of ebony inlaid with jade, there were black tapestries figured with dragons of green and gold. Curtains she saw of peacock-blue; and in a tall, narrow recess, dominating the room, squatted a great golden Buddha.
There is no sort of reason why their sculpture should not have become as perfect as their architecture; there is no sort of reason why their sense of form should not have been as finished as their sense of colour. A statue like the St. George of Donatello would have stood more appropriately under a Gothic than under a Classic arch. The niches were already made for the statues.
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