Wonderfully eloquent after this fashion are the temples of Paestum, far away there to the south beyond Naples, on the flat strip of miserably cultivated soil between the Apennines and the Mediterranean.  But they are too far gone in ruin and decay to speak with so living a voice of sadness as does this old Byzantine church.  The human element is at Paestum too far away,—­too utterly dead and forgotten.  In St. Apollinare life still lingers.  Life, flickering in its last spark, like the twinkling of a lamp which the next moment will extinguish, is still there.  Life more suggestive of death, than any utter absence of life could be.

There are some dilapidated remains of conventual buildings on the southern side of the church, mean, and of a date some thousand years subsequent to that of the Basilica.  They are nearly ruinous, but are still—­or were till within a few years—­inhabited by one Capucin friar, and one lay brother of the order, whose duty it was to mutter a mass, with ague-chattering jaws, at the high altar, and act as guardians of the building.

Small guardianship is needed.  The huge ancient doors—­made of planks from vine trunks which grew fifteen hundred years ago on the Bosphorus—­are never closed; probably because their weight would defy the efforts of the two poor old friars, to whom the keeping of the building is committed, to move them.  But a poor and mean low gate of iron rails has been fitted to the colossal marble door-posts, which suffices to prevent the wandering cattle of the waste from straying into the church, but does not prevent the fever-laden mists from the marshes from drifting into the huge nave, and depositing their unwholesome moisture in great trickling drops upon the green-stained walls.

But not even the low iron gateway was closed when Paolina reached the church.  It stood partially open.  After having stood a minute or two before the building to look round upon the scene, Paolina stepped up to the gate and looked into the church, but could see no human being.  Within, as without, all was utter death-like silence.  She shivered, and drew her cloak more closely round her, as she stood at the gate; for the healthy blood was running rapidly through her veins after her brisk walk, and the deadly cold damp air from the church struck her with a shudder, which was but the physical complement of the moral impression produced by the aspect of the place.

After a minute, however, wondering at the stillness, half frightened at the utter solitude, and awed by the vast gloomy grandeur of the naked but venerable building, she pushed the gate, and entered.

CHAPTER IV

Father Fabiano