interest which of the two roofs was painted first.

Your Murray's Guide tells you the frescos in this chapel were painted
between 1296 and 1304. But as they represent, among other personages,
St. Louis of Toulouse, who was not canonized till 1317, that statement
is not altogether tenable. Also, as the first stone of the church was
only laid in 1294, when Giotto was a youth of eighteen, it is little
likely that either it would have been ready to be painted, or he ready
with his scheme of practical divinity, two years later.

Farther, Arnolfo, the builder of the main body of the church, died in
1310. And as St. Louis of Toulouse was not a saint till seven years
afterwards, and the frescos therefore beside the window not painted in
Arnolfo's day, it becomes another question whether Arnolfo left the
chapels or the church at all, in their present form.

On which point--now that I have shown you where Giotto's St. Louis is
--I will ask you to think awhile, until you are interested; and then I
will try to satisfy your curiosity. There fore, please leave the little
chapel for the moment, and walk down the nave, till you come to two
sepulchral slabs near the west end, and then look about you and see
what sort of a church Santa Croce is.

Without looking about you at all, you may find, in your Murray, the
useful information that it is a church which "consists of a very wide
nave and lateral aisles, separated by seven fine pointed arches." And
as you will be--under ordinary conditions of tourist hurry--glad to
learn so much, _without_ looking, it is little likely to occur to
you that this nave and two rich aisles required also, for your complete
present comfort, walls at both ends, and a roof on the top. It is just