dear to me, among all this violence of representation.

'_Couvre-toi de gloire, Tartarin--couvre-toi de flanelle._' Why should
it please me so that his cloak is of red flannel?

In a valley near St Jakob, just over the ridge, a long way from the
railway, there is a very big, important shrine by the roadside. It is a
chapel built in the baroque manner, florid pink and cream outside, with
opulent small arches. And inside is the most startling sensational
Christus I have ever seen. He is a big, powerful man, seated after the
crucifixion, perhaps after the resurrection, sitting by the grave. He
sits sideways, as if the extremity were over, finished, the agitation
done with, only the result of the experience remaining. There is some
blood on his powerful, naked, defeated body, that sits rather hulked.
But it is the face which is so terrifying. It is slightly turned over
the hulked, crucified shoulder, to look. And the look of this face, of
which the body has been killed, is beyond all expectation horrible. The
eyes look at one, yet have no seeing in them, they seem to see only
their own blood. For they are bloodshot till the whites are scarlet, the
iris is purpled. These red, bloody eyes with their stained pupils,
glancing awfully at all who enter the shrine, looking as if to see
through the blood of the late brutal death, are terrible. The naked,
strong body has known death, and sits in utter dejection, finished,
hulked, a weight of shame. And what remains of life is in the face,
whose expression is sinister and gruesome, like that of an unrelenting
criminal violated by torture. The criminal look of misery and hatred on
the fixed, violated face and in the bloodshot eyes is almost impossible.
He is conquered, beaten, broken, his body is a mass of torture, an
unthinkable shame. Yet his will remains obstinate and ugly, integral
with utter hatred.