"A library!" she exclaimed, when they had entered the vast hall, "but where are the books?"
"In these glass cases—listen to the guide."
Not until the end of their tour of the great hall did they learn that the library, in the ordinary sense of books and manuscripts available for students, was not open to ordinary visitors. The so-called library through which the guide led them was high vaulted, and more than two hundred feet long, with painted ceiling, floors of marble mosaics from ancient temples and baths, and exquisite marble columns also from ancient buildings. In the end they saw some books worth seeing: the oldest Bible in existence, a manuscript of the fourth century, and an old second century Virgil. Of later times there was a volume of Henry VIII's love letters to Anne Boleyn, and many exquisitely illustrated manuscripts, among them a Natural History illuminated by Raphael and his pupils.
"I wish he'd cut it short," said Marion, as the guide gave long descriptions of each manuscript that he pointed out in its case, or in the drawers that he sometimes unlocked.
"I rather enjoy what he says about the manuscripts as you translate it for me," responded Irma, "but he need not describe every present given to every pope. Vases are vases, and we know all these things were presents to one pope or another. They are all costly and some are beautiful. But I am getting tired."
It would not have been possible, even had they dared try to hurry the loquacious guide. Before they left the hall Irma almost forgot her fatigue in looking at the ancient paintings, inscriptions, and other relics of early Christians. Again, as at the Lateran, she sighed deeply at the pathos of the little things brought from the Catacombs, combs and small toilet articles, little brooches, and other pieces of simple jewelry.
"You are really tired!" exclaimed Marion, as they passed through the glass door out of the hall. "But in the Sistine Chapel you can sit down."
So it happened that after Irma had looked into a mirror held under the ceiling, on which are painted Michelangelo's frescoes—the sibyls and the prophets, and the well-known Adam and Eve, Irma from a bench along the side looked with more or less interest at the paintings opposite her by Pinturicchio and other masters.