The Church of San Francesco was a Church of the Dove. I passed it
several times in the dark, silent little square, without knowing it was
a church. Its pink walls were blind, windowless, unnoticeable, it gave
no sign, unless one caught sight of the tan curtain hanging in the door,
and the slit of darkness beneath. Yet it was the chief church of
the village.

But the Church of San Tommaso perched over the village. Coming down the
cobbled, submerged street, many a time I looked up between the houses
and saw the thin old church standing above in the light, as if it
perched on the house-roofs. Its thin grey neck was held up stiffly,
beyond was a vision of dark foliage, and the high hillside.

I saw it often, and yet for a long time it never occurred to me that it
actually existed. It was like a vision, a thing one does not expect to
come close to. It was there standing away upon the house-tops, against a
glamour of foliaged hillside. I was submerged in the village, on the
uneven, cobbled street, between old high walls and cavernous shops and
the houses with flights of steps.

For a long time I knew how the day went, by the imperious clangour of
midday and evening bells striking down upon the houses and the edge of
the lake. Yet it did not occur to me to ask where these bells rang. Till
at last my everyday trance was broken in upon, and I knew the ringing of
the Church of San Tommaso. The church became a living connexion with me.

So I set out to find it, I wanted to go to it. It was very near. I could
see it from the piazza by the lake. And the village itself had only a
few hundreds of inhabitants. The church must be within a stone's throw.