She therefore pretended
to take a lively interest in the precious interior of this monastery,
which has such a bare and dreary exterior, while all the while her
one wish was to revisit it more peacefully with her sister or her
brother-in-law.
Upon descending into that mine of holiness, neither of them understood
what road they were following, surrounded as they were by the lifeless,
cold atmosphere, the mystic shadows, the yellowish lights falling from
above, the odours of damp stone, of smoking wicks, of musty draperies;
bewildered by visions of chapels, of grottos, of crosses at the foot of
dark stairs; losing themselves in their flight down towards the lower
caverns, keeping on a level with their own pointed vaults; of marbles
the colour of blood, the colour of the night, the colour of snow; of
stiff, pious groups with Byzantine features, crowding the walls, the
drums of the arches; of little monks and little friars, standing in the
window niches, on the pinnacles of the vaults, along the line of the
entablatures, each with his venerable aureole.
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