CHAPTER IV

Father Fabiano


Paolina entered hesitatingly, and starting at the echoes of her
footsteps on the flagstones, wet and green, and slimy from the
water, which often in every year lies many inches deep on the floor
of the church. She advanced towards a small marble altar which
stands quite isolated in the middle of the huge nave. And as she
neared it she perceived, with a violent start, that there was a
living figure kneeling at it. So still, so utterly motionless had
this solitary worshipper been, so little visible in the dim light
was the hue of the Franciscan's frock that entirely covered him,
that Paolina had not imagined that there had been any living
creature in the church. She saw, however, in the same instant that
she became aware of his presence, that the figure was that of a
Capucin friar, and doubted not that he must be the guardian of the
church, whom she had been told she would find there.

The little low altar, of an antiquity coeval with that of the
church, which stands in the centre of the nave, is the sole
exception to the entire and utter emptiness of the place. There are,
indeed, ranged along the walls of the side aisles, several ancient
marble coffins, curiously carved, and with semi-circular covers,
which contain the bodies of the earliest Bishops of the See. But the
little altar is the sole object that breaks the continuity of the
open floor. The body of St. Apollinare was originally laid beneath