eBooks Base 2000

There
is no such thing as making my page glow with the most distant idea of the
magnificence of this church, in its details and in its whole. It was
founded a hundred or two hundred years ago; then Bonaparte contemplated
transforming it into a Temple of Victory, or building it anew as one.
The restored Bourbons remade it into a church; but it still has a
heathenish look, and will never lose it.
When we entered we saw a crowd of people, all pressing forward towards
the high altar, before which burned a hundred wax lights, some of which
were six or seven feet high; and, altogether, they shone like a galaxy of
stars. In the middle of the nave, moreover, there was another galaxy of
wax candles burning around an immense pall of black velvet, embroidered
with silver, which seemed to cover, not only a coffin, but a sarcophagus,
or something still more huge. The organ was rumbling forth a deep,
lugubrious bass, accompanied with heavy chanting of priests, out of which
sometimes rose the clear, young voices of choristers, like light flashing
out of the gloom.


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