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All void and tenantless! At the top of the stairs was a library with dim bookcases and marble floors and busts; but no custode no reader not a sound! "We seem to be all alone here with St. Francis!" said Diana, softly, as they descended to the street "or is everybody at church?" They turned their steps back to the Lower Church. As they went in, darkness darkness sudden and profound engulfed them.
In 1848, during the rebellion of the North Italians against the Austrians, eight or nine young men, for whom the authorities were hunting, hid themselves inside Donatello's wooden horse in the Salone at Padua and lay there for five days, being fed through the trap door on the back of the horse with the connivance of the custode of the Salone. No doubt they were let out for a time at night.
This circumstance threw upon the Custode, a naturally tedious and oppressive old man, the responsibility of being doubly prolix and garrulous. He reveled in his office of showing the palace, and did homage to the visitor's charge and nation by an infinite expansion upon all possible points of interest, lest he should go away imperfectly informed of anything.
It was a matter of course to him that any human beings who came to St. Apollinare could have no business there but to see the old walls, which he, the friar, would have given so much never to see again. "We will do so presently," said Signor Logarini, in reply; "but, in the first place, we wish to speak with Father Fabiano he is the custode of the church, is he not?"
It looks just as bad as it is; round, only seven paces across, yet so obscure that our tapers could not illuminate it from side to side, the stones of which it is constructed being as black as midnight. The custode showed us a stone post, at the side of the cell, with the hole in the top of it, into which, he said, St.
I spent long hours in these old musty rooms alone, and I might have stolen away whatever took my fancy had I been so minded, for the custode left me quite alone to wander at will, and the cases containing the seals, parchments, and small objects were all unfastened.
By dint of frequent encounter with strangers, this Custode had picked up many shreds and fragments of many languages, and did not permit the travellers to consider themselves as having at all understood him until he had repeated everything in Italian, English, French, and German.
Exposed to the weather at first, these invaluable frescoes had faded into mere spectres of pictures; but they are now protected from further injury by glass. Usually the church is closed, except in the early morning, and visitors are admitted by the custode on ringing a door bell under the portico.
This morning we went again to the Duomo of the popes; and this time we allowed the custode, or sacristan, to show us the curiosities of it. He led us into a chapel apart, and showed us the old Gothic tomb of Pope John XXII., where the recumbent statue of the pope lies beneath one of those beautiful and venerable canopies of stone which look at once so light and so solemn.
We touched it with the tips of our fingers, as well as saw it with our eyes. The custode soon returned, and led us down the darksome steps, chattering in Italian all the time. It is not a very long descent to the lower cell, the roof of which is so low that I believe I could have reached it with my hand.
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