It was a long story of buried treasure, buried or lost I know not which, that he tried to tell me, while he pointed to the beautiful pavement, or caressed the old fading pillars, leading me up the broken steps into the greater darkness of the nave, where he showed me one of the most ancient pictures in Pisa, a great, mournful, and grievous crucifix, a colossal Christ, His feet nailed separately to the cross, His body tortured and emaciated, a hideous mask of death;—­here in the temple of Apollo.  “It is here,” said he, smiling, “that Paganism and Christianity were married; and in the temple lie the dead, and in the church the living pray, as you see, Signore, beside these old pillars that were not built for any Christian house.  Such is the splendour and antiquity of our city.  For, as you know, doubtless, the Duomo itself is built on the foundations of Nero’s Palace,[76] S. Andrea (not far away) was once a temple of Venus, in S. Niccola we besought Ceres, and in S. Michele called on Mars; such, Signore, is the splendour and glory of our city....”

Evening had come when I found myself again on the Lung’ Arno, in a world neither Pagan nor Christian, in which I am a stranger.

* * * * *

Leaving behind you Ponte di Mezzo and the Lung’ Arno, quasi a modo d’un archo di balestro,[77] you come into the Borgo, under the low arches of the old houses that make a covered way.  This is perhaps the oldest part of Pisa.  Almost at once on your right you pass S. Michele in Borgo, built probably just before his death by Fra Guglielmo, that disciple of Niccolo Pisano.  Fra Guglielmo died in the convent of S. Caterina, for he had been fifty-seven years in the Dominican Order.  Tronci tells us that, being one day in Bologna, where he had gone with Niccolo his master to make a tomb for S. Domenico, when the old tomb was opened he secretly took a bone and hid it, and without saying anything presently set out for Pisa.  Arrived there, he placed the relic under the table of the altar of S. Maria Maddalena, and was seen often by the brethren praying there,—­they knew not why.  But at his death he revealed his pious theft, and showed the bone in its place, and it was guarded and shown to the people.

But S. Michele in Borgo is older than Fra Guglielmo, who died about the year 1313.  Certainly the crypt is ancient as are the pillars.  A certain Buono is said to have built a church here in 990; but little, however, now remaining can be of that date, the church as a whole being of about 1312, and, as I have said, probably the last work of Fra Guglielmo.

Passing up the Borgo, here and there we may see signs of ancient Pisa in the sunken pillars, for instance, before a house in a street on the left, Via del Monte, following which we come into the most beautiful Piazza in Pisa, perhaps in Italy, Piazza dei Cavalieri, once the Piazza dei Anziani.