fled from such a fearful decoration as gaudy as that of a fair booth. Ah!
how far he was from the cathedrals where in childhood he had believed and
prayed! On all sides he found the same type of church, the antique
basilica accommodated to the taste of eighteenth-century Rome. Though the
style of San Luigi dei Francesi is better, more soberly elegant, the only
thing that touched him even there was the thought of the heroic or
saintly Frenchmen, who sleep in foreign soil beneath the flags. And as he
sought for something Gothic, he ended by going to see Santa Maria sopra
Minerva,* which, he was told, was the only example of the Gothic style in
Rome. Here his stupefaction attained a climax at sight of the clustering
columns cased in stucco imitating marble, the ogives which dared not
soar, the rounded vaults condemned to the heavy majesty of the dome
style. No, no, thought he, the faith whose cooling cinders lingered there
was no longer that whose brazier had invaded and set all Christendom
aglow! However, Monsignor Fornaro whom he chanced to meet as he was
leaving the church, inveighed against the Gothic style as rank heresy.
The first Christian church, said the prelate, had been the basilica,
which had sprung from the temple, and it was blasphemy to assert that the
Gothic cathedral was the real Christian house of prayer, for Gothic
embodied the hateful Anglo-Saxon spirit, the rebellious genius of Luther.
At this a passionate reply rose to Pierre's lips, but he said nothing for
fear that he might say too much. However, he asked himself whether in all
this there was not a decisive proof that Catholicism was the very
vegetation of Rome, Paganism modified by Christianity. Elsewhere
Christianity has grown up in quite a different spirit, to such a point
that it has risen in rebellion and schismatically turned against the
mother-city. And the breach has ever gone on widening, the dissemblance
has become more and more marked; and amidst the evolution of new
societies, yet a fresh schism appears inevitable and proximate in spite
of all the despairing efforts to maintain union.