“What mean you?”
“Marry, that I would be as ready to leave the world as thou, were it not for those arts, which beautify existence here below, and make it dear to men of sense and education. No; so long as the Nine Muses strew my path with roses of learning and art, me may Apollo inspire with wisdom and caution, that knowing the wiles of my countrymen, I may eat poison neither at God's altar nor at a friend's table, since, wherever I eat it or drink it, it will assuredly cut short my mortal thread; and I am writing a book—heart and soul in it—'The Dream of Polifilo,' the man of many arts. So name not poison to me till that is finished and copied.”
And now the great bells of St. John Lateran's were rung with a clash at short intervals, and the people hurried thither to see the heads of St. Peter and St. Paul.
Gerard and the friar got a good place in the church, and there was a great curtain, and after long and breathless expectation of the people, this curtain was drawn by jerks, and at a height of about thirty feet were two human heads with bearded faces, that seemed alive. They were shown no longer than the time to say an Ave Maria, and then the curtain drawn. But they were shown in this fashion three times. St. Peter's complexion was pale, his face oval, his beard grey and forked; his head crowned with a papal mitre. St. Paul was dark skinned, with a thick, square beard; his face also and head were more square and massive, and full of resolution.
Gerard was awe-struck. The friar approved after his fashion.
“This exhibition of the 'imagines,' or waxen effigies of heroes and demigods, is a venerable custom, and inciteth the vulgar to virtue by great and invisible examples.
“Waxen images? What, are they not the apostles themselves, embalmed, or the like?”
The friar moaned.
“They did not exist in the year 800. The great old Roman families always produced at their funerals a series of these 'imagines,' thereby tying past and present history together, and showing the populace the features of far-famed worthies. I can conceive nothing more thrilling or instructive. But then the effigies were portraits made during life or at the hour of death. These of St. Paul and St. Peter are moulded out of pure fancy.”
“Ah! say not so, father.”