ds, perhaps because it was so dark--who knows; and on the 30th of
August 1119, Archbishop Pietro, he who brought the cross of silver from
Rome and put in it the banner of the city and led Pisa to victory in
Majorca, solemnly consecrated it.

I was thinking somewhat in this fashion, resting on a bench in that cool
twilight place, where the sounds of life come from very far off, when
out of the darkness an old man crept toward me; he seemed as old as the
church itself. "The Signore would see the church," he asked; "who can
the Signore wish for better than myself?--it is my own church, I am its
guardian." Truly he was very old: if he were Apollo, long and evil had
been his days; if he were St. Peter, indeed he was very like.

It was a long story of buried treasure, buried or lost I know not which,
that he tried to tell me, while he pointed to the beautiful pavement, or
caressed the old fading pillars, leading me up the broken steps into the
greater darkness of the nave, where he showed me one of the most ancient
pictures in Pisa, a great, mournful, and grievous crucifix, a colossal
Christ, His feet nailed separately to the cross, His body tortured and
emaciated, a hideous mask of death;--here in the temple of Apollo. "It
is here," said he, smiling, "that Paganism and Christianity were
married; and in the temple lie the dead, and in the church the living
pray, as you see, Signore, beside these old pillars that were not built
for any Christian house. Such is the splendour and antiquity of our
city. For, as you know, doubtless, the Duomo itself is built on the
foundations of Nero's Palace,[76] S. Andrea (not far away) was once a
temple of Venus, in S. Niccola we besought Ceres, and in S. Michele
called on Mars; such, Signore, is the splendour and glory of our
city...."

Evening had come when I found myself again on the Lung' Arno, in a world
neither Pagan nor Christian, in which I am a stranger.

* * * * *

Leaving behind you Ponte di Mezzo and the Lung' Arno, _quasi a modo d'un
archo di balestro_,[77] you come into the Borgo, under the low arches of
the old houses that make a covered way. This is perhaps the oldest part
of Pisa. Almost at once on your right you pass S. Michele in Borgo,
built probably just before his death by Fra Guglielmo, that disciple of
Niccolo Pisano. Fra Guglielmo died in the convent of S. Caterina, for he
had been fifty-seven years in the Dominican Order. Tronci tell