eBooks Base 2000

The pictures that decorated the shrines along the side
aisles have been removed, leaving bare, blank spaces of brickwork, very
dreary and desolate to behold. This is almost worse than a black
oil-painting or a faded fresco. The church was much injured by the
French, and afterwards by the Austrians, both powers having quartered
their troops within the holy precincts. Its old walls, however, are yet
stalwart enough to outlast another set of frescos, and to see the
beginning and the end of a new school of painting as long-lived as
Cimabue's. I should be sorry to have the church go to decay, because it
was here that Boccaccio's dames and cavaliers encountered one another,
and formed their plan of retreating into the country during the
plague. . . . .
At the door we bought a string of beads, with a small crucifix appended,
in memory of the place. The beads seem to be of a grayish, pear-shaped
seed, and the seller assured us that they were the tears of St. Job.
They were cheap, probably because Job shed so many tears in his lifetime.


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