Then nowhere, not even at Ravenna, have I seen such mosaics as in the
Capella Palatine, which from pavement to domed ceiling is all gold: one
really feels as if one was sitting in the heart of a great honey-comb
looking at angels singing: and _looking_ at angels, or indeed at people,
singing, is much nicer than listening to them, for this reason: the great
artists always give to their angels lutes without strings, pipes without
vent-holes, and reeds through which no wind can wander or make
whistlings.
Monreale you have heard of--with its cloisters and cathedral: we often
drove there.
I also made great friends with a young seminarist, who lived in the
cathedral of Palermo--he and eleven others, in little rooms beneath the
roof, like birds.
Every day he showed me all over the cathedral, I knelt before the huge
porphyry sarcophagus in which Frederick the Second lies: it is a sublime
bare monstrous thing--blood-coloured, and held up by lions who have
caught some of the rage of the great Emperor's restless soul.
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