The Marble Faun

Kenyon, Miriam, and Donatello gather outside the Church of the Capuchins the next morning, with Miriam putting on “frantic efforts to be gay” after the horrors of the previous night (131). The three friends wonder what has become of Hilda. Donatello confesses that he is sad, and Kenyon notices that his “youthful gayety” is “eclipsed, if not utterly extinct” (132).

Entering the church, the three friends see a casket containing the body of a dead monk and hear monks singing a funeral chant. They get permission to view Guido’s painting of St. Michael, which Miriam criticizes for its lack of realism in depicting the battle of good and evil. The sight of the dead monk greatly troubles Donatello, and Miriam comforts him.

Looking at the dead monk—who the sacristan explains was named Brother Antonio—Miriam is shocked to realize that it is the model. The three friends notice blood trickling from the dead man’s nostrils into his beard, which Kenyon says indicates that he died from a violent accident. Alone, Miriam speaks to the dead monk, saying that she is not afraid to meet him on Judgment Day.

The sacristan gives Miriam and Donatello a tour of the cemetery underneath the church, where monks of many centuries are buried and skeletons and skulls of unearthed bodies line the walls.