So to
escape it he had to climb higher still, even to the outer gallery which
encircles the lantern, hovering in the very heavens.
* Thou art Peter (Petrus) and on that rock (Petram) will I build
my church, and to thee will I give the keys of the Kingdom of
Heaven.
How delightful was the relief which that bath of air and sunlight at
first brought him! Above him now there only remained the ball of gilt
copper into which emperors and queens have ascended, as is testified by
the pompous inscriptions in the passages; a hollow ball it is, where the
voice crashes like thunder, where all the sounds of space reverberate. As
he emerged on the side of the apse, his eyes at first plunged into the
papal gardens, whose clumps of trees seemed mere bushes almost level with
the soil; and he could retrace his recent stroll among them, the broad
/parterre/ looking like a faded Smyrna rug, the large wood showing the
deep glaucous greenery of a stagnant pool. Then there were the kitchen
garden and the vineyard easily identified and tended with care. The
fountains, the observatory, the casino, where the Pope spent the hot days
of summer, showed merely like little white spots in those undulating
grounds, walled in like any other estate, but with the fearsome rampart
of the fourth Leo, which yet retained its fortress-like aspect. However,
Pierre took his way round the narrow gallery and abruptly found himself
in front of Rome, a sudden and immense expanse, with the distant sea on
the west, the uninterrupted mountain chains on the east and the south,
the Roman Campagna stretching to the horizon like a bare and greenish
desert, while the city, the Eternal City, was spread out at his feet.
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