There are no transept doors; and
one never wanders round to the desolate front. From either of the side
doors, a few paces will bring you to the middle of the nave, and to the
point opposite the middle of the third arch from the west end; where you
will find yourself--if well in the mid-wave--standing on a circular slab
of green porphyry, which marks the former place of the grave of the bishop
Zenobius. The larger inscription, on the wide circle of the floor outside
of you, records the translation of his body; the smaller one round the
stone at your feet--"quiescimus, domum hanc quum adimus ultimam"--is a
painful truth, I suppose, to travellers like us, who never rest anywhere
now, if we can help it.
Resting here, at any rate, for a few minutes, look up to the whitewashed
vaulting of the compartment of the roof next the west end.
You will see nothing whatever in it worth looking at. Nevertheless,
look a little longer.
But the longer you look, the less you will understand why I tell you to
look. It is nothing but a whitewashed ceiling: vaulted indeed,--but so
is many a tailor's garret window, for that matter. Indeed, now that you
have looked steadily for a minute or so, and are used to the form of
the arch, it seems to become so small that you can almost fancy it the
ceiling of a good-sized lumber-room in an attic.
Having attained to this modest conception of it, carry your eyes back
to the similar vault of the second compartment, nearer you.
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