convention for brows and eyes.”
But technical explanations never seemed sufficient to Mr. Green. He saw cruelty and strife in these looks, both the knowledge of it and the practice. Such faces derived from a time when the weak had small protection in law or custom. Is our time so different? hewondered as they emerged into the sunlight. Our faces are different, certainly, the stare is masked. There came suddenly into his mind a memory of Mr. Blemish’s face, blinking softly as he explained the terms of the contract.
His wife had seemed to enjoy the visit to the church in the usual way and Mr. Green said nothing to her of his feelings, of how oppressive and even frightening he had found the paintings this time. It was a lapse from the full confidence they enjoyed together, almost like a mild form of betrayal—or so at least he felt it; but he judged it worse to spoil her mood with his doubts and glooms.
On the way back they visited the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli on the plain below Assisi, not so much for the sake of the church itself—it was too enormous, too grandiose, too lavishly baroque for their taste—but for the little cluster of much older buildings within it, associated with the life of St. Francis and his companions, including the little cell where the saint died. The Greens stood immediately below the vast dome in the very center of the great echoing basilica and looked at the tiny low-roofed house known as the Porziuncola, improbably preserved among the swirling splendors all around.
“I can never come to terms with it somehow,” Mrs. Green said. “When St. Francis was alive this was all there was, this little place, not much more than a hut, with nothing but forest all around, and wolves and bears prowling about. It’s not that easy to imagine in these surroundings, is it?”
It had been there more than two hundred years already when St. Francis came upon it in 1208, ruinous and long abandoned, a small oratory dedicated to St. Mary of the Angels. Attracted by theseclusion and tranquillity of the place, the saint had rebuilt it with his own hands, living a life of poverty and prayer here with a handful of devoted companions.
Before leaving through the west gate they turned and looked down the full length of the interior, a hundred and fifteen meters, their guidebook informed them. From here it could be seen how the little oratory so lovingly restored by St. Francis had, by a paradox of history, been both preserved and abandoned within the huge and pompous hangar that had grown up around it, built to accommodate the thousands of pilgrims who came in early August for the Festa del Perdono. This elaborate carapace had drained the oratory of meaning—the meaning was all in the opulent decoration of the surroundings: the marble madonnas and gilded scrolls and trumpeting angels—a display of wealth and power that Francis had sought through the example of his life to oppose. The humble oratory, like the poverty of the saint, was no more now than a quaint survival, reminder of some former, outmoded perversity or eccentricity. “St. Francis’s house,” Mrs. Green said and sighed. “Better if they had left it to the wolves again once he had gone.”
In the evening they went over the money again. They had bought the house on an impulse, immediately drawn to the peace of the place, the warm colors of the landscape and the way the house itself had settled into the hillside and seemed so securely to belong there. It was rather larger than they needed but family and friends would come to stay. The estimate for the conversion was at the limit of what they could afford but when it was done, they told each other, they would live cheaply—they were not materialistic, their needs were simple. They made another of their innumerable planningexpeditions around the house. Here they would have the fireplace, set in an angle of the walls so as not to take up too much room; here they would have their
But technical explanations never seemed sufficient to Mr. Green. He saw cruelty and strife in these looks, both the knowledge of it and the practice. Such faces derived from a time when the weak had small protection in law or custom. Is our time so different? hewondered as they emerged into the sunlight. Our faces are different, certainly, the stare is masked. There came suddenly into his mind a memory of Mr. Blemish’s face, blinking softly as he explained the terms of the contract.
His wife had seemed to enjoy the visit to the church in the usual way and Mr. Green said nothing to her of his feelings, of how oppressive and even frightening he had found the paintings this time. It was a lapse from the full confidence they enjoyed together, almost like a mild form of betrayal—or so at least he felt it; but he judged it worse to spoil her mood with his doubts and glooms.
On the way back they visited the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli on the plain below Assisi, not so much for the sake of the church itself—it was too enormous, too grandiose, too lavishly baroque for their taste—but for the little cluster of much older buildings within it, associated with the life of St. Francis and his companions, including the little cell where the saint died. The Greens stood immediately below the vast dome in the very center of the great echoing basilica and looked at the tiny low-roofed house known as the Porziuncola, improbably preserved among the swirling splendors all around.
“I can never come to terms with it somehow,” Mrs. Green said. “When St. Francis was alive this was all there was, this little place, not much more than a hut, with nothing but forest all around, and wolves and bears prowling about. It’s not that easy to imagine in these surroundings, is it?”
It had been there more than two hundred years already when St. Francis came upon it in 1208, ruinous and long abandoned, a small oratory dedicated to St. Mary of the Angels. Attracted by theseclusion and tranquillity of the place, the saint had rebuilt it with his own hands, living a life of poverty and prayer here with a handful of devoted companions.
Before leaving through the west gate they turned and looked down the full length of the interior, a hundred and fifteen meters, their guidebook informed them. From here it could be seen how the little oratory so lovingly restored by St. Francis had, by a paradox of history, been both preserved and abandoned within the huge and pompous hangar that had grown up around it, built to accommodate the thousands of pilgrims who came in early August for the Festa del Perdono. This elaborate carapace had drained the oratory of meaning—the meaning was all in the opulent decoration of the surroundings: the marble madonnas and gilded scrolls and trumpeting angels—a display of wealth and power that Francis had sought through the example of his life to oppose. The humble oratory, like the poverty of the saint, was no more now than a quaint survival, reminder of some former, outmoded perversity or eccentricity. “St. Francis’s house,” Mrs. Green said and sighed. “Better if they had left it to the wolves again once he had gone.”
In the evening they went over the money again. They had bought the house on an impulse, immediately drawn to the peace of the place, the warm colors of the landscape and the way the house itself had settled into the hillside and seemed so securely to belong there. It was rather larger than they needed but family and friends would come to stay. The estimate for the conversion was at the limit of what they could afford but when it was done, they told each other, they would live cheaply—they were not materialistic, their needs were simple. They made another of their innumerable planningexpeditions around the house. Here they would have the fireplace, set in an angle of the walls so as not to take up too much room; here they would have their
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