But it looked
doubly gloomy by the effect of the few and smoky torches which were used
to enlighten it on the present occasion, and which, spreading a glare
of yellow light in their immediate vicinity, were surrounded beyond by
a red and purple halo reflected from their own smoke, and beyond that
again by a zone of darkness which magnified the extent of the chapel,
while it rendered it impossible for the eye to ascertain its limits.
Some injudicious ornaments, adopted in haste for the occasion, rather
added to the dreariness of the scene. Old fragments of tapestry, torn
from the walls of other apartments, had been hastily and partially
disposed around those of the chapel, and mingled inconsistently with
scutcheons and funeral emblems of the dead, which they elsewhere
exhibited. On each side of the stone altar was a monument, the
appearance of which formed an equally strange contrast. On the one was
the figure, in stone, of some grim hermit, or monk, who had died in
the odour of sanctity; he was represented as recumbent, in his cowl and
scapulaire, with his face turned upward as in the act of devotion, and
his hands folded, from which his string of beads was dependent.
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