And
over the richly sculptured central arch which forms the entrance to the
choir, against the incongruous glitter of gold and jewels and
magnificent garments and lights and sumptuous, overwrought details--the
very extravagance of the Renaissance--a great black marble crucifix bore
aloft the most solemn Symbol of the Christian Faith.
The religious ceremonial with which the festival had opened was over,
and down the aisles on either side, past the family altars, with their
innumerable candles and lanterns and censers,--ceaselessly smoking in
memorial of the honored dead,--the brothers of the Frari and the Servi
marched in solemn procession to the chant of the acolytes, returning to
mass themselves in the transepts, in fuller view of the pulpits, before
the contest began. The Frari had taken their position on the right,
under the elaborate hanging tomb of Fra Pacifico--a mass of sculpture,
rococo, and gilding; the incense rising from the censer swinging below
the coffin of the saint carried the eye insensibly upward to the
grotesque canopy, where cumbrous marble clouds were compacted of dense
masses of saints' and cherubs' heads with uncompromising golden halos.
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