TRAU—VESTIBULE OF THE CATHEDRAL
Miles upon miles of bright-golden and rose-red vineyards edge the startling blue of the sea. And the vines are not stunted and ugly, but large, leafy, growing with a rank luxuriance. Among them, with trunks caught as it were in the warm embraces of these troops of bacchantes, are thousands of silver-green olive-trees. And peasants in red, peasants in orange-color, move waist-deep, sometimes shoulder-deep, through the glory, under the glory of the sun. Here and there in a grass-grown clearing, like a small islet in the ocean of vines, appears a hut of brushwood and woven grasses, and under the trees before it sit peasants eating the grapes they have just picked warm from the plants. Now and then a sportsman may be seen, in peasant costume, smoking a cigarette, his gun over his shoulder, passing slowly with his red-brown dog among the red-gold vines. Now and then a distant report rings out among the olives. Then the warm silence falls again over this rapture of autumn. And so, you come to Trau.
Trau is a tiny town set on a tiny island approached by bridges, medieval, sleepy, yet happy, almost drowsily joyous, in appearance, with that air of half-gentle, half-blithe satisfaction with self which makes so many Dalmatian places characteristic and almost touching. How odd to live in Trau! Yet might it not be a delicious experience to live in dear little Trau with the right person, separated from the world by the shining water,—for who comes over the bridges, when all is said?—guarded by the lion and the statue which crown the gateway, cradled in peace and mellow fruitfulness?
The gateway passed, a narrow alley or two threaded, a corner turned, and, lo! a piazza, a loggia with fine old columns, a tiled roof and a clock-tower, a campanile and a cathedral with a great porch, and underneath the porch a marvel of a doorway! Can tiny Trau on its tiny island really possess all this?
The lion doorway of the duomo at Trau is certainly one of the finest things in Dalmatia. The duomo dates from the thirteenth century, but has been twice enlarged. It is not large now, but small and high, dim, full of the smell of stale incense, blackened by age, almost strangely silent, almost strangely secluded. In the choir is a deep well with an old well-head. There are many tombs in the pavement. The finely carved pulpit, with its little lion, and the fifteenth-century choir-stalls are well worth seeing, and the roof of the chapel of St. Giovanni Orsini, which contains a great marble tomb, has been made wonderful by age, like an old face made wonderful by wrinkles. But Radovan's doorway is certainly the marvel of Trau. In color it is a rich, deep, dusty brown, and it is elaborately and splendidly carved with two big lions, with Adam on a lion and with Eve on a lioness. The lioness is grasping a lamb. There is a multiplicity of other detail. The two big lions, which stick out on each side of the round-arched doorway, as if about to step forth into the alleys of Trau, have a fine air of life, though they both look tame. Their mouths are open, but almost smiling.
RAGUSA