he only shrugged his shoulders and answered in barbarous Italian. I

shall speak further of this guide in a future chapter. All the

information we got out of him we shall be able to carry along with us, I

think.

I have not been to church so often in a long time as I have in the last

few weeks. The people in these old lands seem to make churches their

specialty. Especially does this seem to be the case with the citizens of

Genoa. I think there is a church every three or four hundred yards all

over town. The streets are sprinkled from end to end with shovel-hatted,

long-robed, well-fed priests, and the church bells by dozens are pealing

all the day long, nearly. Every now and then one comes across a friar of

orders gray, with shaven head, long, coarse robe, rope girdle and beads,

and with feet cased in sandals or entirely bare. These worthies suffer

in the flesh and do penance all their lives, I suppose, but they look

like consummate famine-breeders. They are all fat and serene.

The old Cathedral of San Lorenzo is about as notable a building as we

have found in Genoa. It is vast, and has colonnades of noble pillars,

and a great organ, and the customary pomp of gilded moldings, pictures,

frescoed ceilings, and so forth. I cannot describe it, of course--it

would require a good many pages to do that. But it is a curious place.

They said that half of it--from the front door halfway down to the altar

--was a Jewish synagogue before the Saviour was born, and that no

alteration had been made in it since that time. We doubted the

statement, but did it reluctantly. We would much rather have believed

184

The Innocents Abroad