world? They are men of blood too, men of evil lives; and conscience
makes them cowards. They begin to think that they have gone too far.
Could they see the saint, and make it up with him somewhat?

No. The saint they cannot see. To open his shrine would be to
commit the sin of Uzzah. Palsy and blindness would be the least that
would follow. But the dome under which he lies all men may see; and
perhaps the saint may listen, if they speak him fair.

They feel more and more uncomfortable. This saint, in heaven at
God's right hand, and yet there in the dom-church--is clearly a
mysterious, ubiquitous person, who may take them in the rear very
unexpectedly. And his priests, with their book-learning, and their
sciences, and their strange dresses and chants--who knows what secret
powers, magical or other, they may not possess?

They bluster at first: being (as I have said) much of the temper and
habits, for good and evil, of English navvies. But they grow more
and more uneasy, full of childish curiosity, and undefined dread. So
into the town they go, on promise (which they will honourably keep,
being German men) of doing no harm to the plebs, the half Roman
artisans and burghers who are keeping themselves alive here--the last
dying remnants of the civilization, and luxury, and cruelty, and
wickedness, of a great Roman colonial city; and they stare at arts
and handicrafts new to them; and are hospitably fed by bishops and
priests; and then they go, trembling and awkward, into the great dom-
church; and gaze wondering at the frescoes, and the carvings of the
arcades--marbles from Italy, porphyries from Egypt, all patched
together out of the ruins of Roman baths, and temples, and theatres;
and at last they arrive at the saint's shrine itself--some marble