And mere size with a dim light and a savour of incense is enough: it carries religion.

No need for masses and chants or any ceremony whatever: the world is shut out, one is on terms with the infinite.

A forest exercises the same spell; among mountains one feels it; but in such a cathedral as the Duomo one feels it perhaps most of all, for it is the work of man, yet touched with mystery and wonder, and the knowledge that man is the author of such a marvel adds to its greatness.
The interior is so dim and strange as to be for a time sheer terra incognita, and to see a bat flitting from side to side, as I have often done even in the morning, is to receive no shock.

In such a twilight land there must naturally be bats, one thinks.

The darkness is due not to lack of windows but to time.