Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/24

34 columned aisles, its lofty dome, and its many beautiful works of art. The walls are covered with, paintings, both of the older and later masters. Many are by Andrea del Sarto, simple, tender, and full of deep feeling in expression, and natural in execution.

Some antique statues stand also in the church. “This,” said my cicerone, pointing to a warlike figure in marble, “is a statue of the god Mars, which was found not far from this place.”

“But what has the god Mars to do in the church here?” I asked.

“Oh,” replied Antonio, the sacristan, “they have baptized him to San Piso, and so they were able to set him up here.”

“How! they have baptized a marble statue?” I repeated.

“Yes,” replied Antonio unmoved, “because they said it was a beautiful statue, which would be an ornament to the church. And therefore the god Mars was baptized, and now he is San Piso.”

Whilst we walked, thus conversing, through the church, the priests were performing mass at the high altar, for the soul of some long-deceased canon of the church, and all around lay people upon their knees, or sitting at the confessional. Antonio, for all this, did not intermit his explanations in a high key, and coughed and spit, sometimes just before the kneeling and confessing penitents, in a manner which scandalized me, but did not seem either to move or disturb them. It was in this church that Galileo, then only eighteen years old, discovered the principle of the