High up on the left looms the
terrible crag, dear to falcons and crows, bulging out above the dreary
walls, pierced by unadorned openings which are incrusted upon the bare
slope, running crosswise along its face, and form the monastery of the
Sacro Speco. In the depths below the convent hangs the rose garden of
St. Benedict, and below the rose garden hang the kitchen-garden and the
olive groves, sloping to the open bed of the roaring Anio. The mass of
cloud which had rested on the heights of Jenne was rising and invading
the sky. A wave of shadow passed over the enormous crag, over the
monastery, over the parapet upon which Noemi had rested her elbows, lost
in contemplation.
"This is magnificent!" she said. "Let us stop here a few seconds at
least, now that it is shady,"
But at that moment the little door of the monastery, not two steps from
them, opened and a party of visitors, men and women, came out. The monk
who had acted as guide, seeing Noemi and Jeanne, held the door open,
expecting them to enter. Jeanne hastened to do so, and Noemi, much
against her will, followed her,
"Thirteenth century frescoes," said the Benedictine, in the dark
entrance-hall, in an indifferent tone, as he passed on.
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