The clever lady then said that she was going to spend a long morning in Santa Croce, and if Lucy would come too, she would be delighted.
Lucy said that this was most kind, and at once opened the Baedeker, to see where Santa Croce was.
Certainly they had seemed a long time in reaching Santa Croce, the tower of which had been plainly visible from the landing window.
Lucy, who wanted to see Santa Croce, suggested, as a possible solution, that they should ask the way there.
How could she find her way about in Santa Croce? Her first morning was ruined, and she might never be in Florence again.
She watched the tourists; their noses were as red as their Baedekers, so cold was Santa Croce. She beheld the horrible fate that overtook three Papists--two he-babies and a she-baby--who began their career by sousing each other with the Holy Water, and then proceeded to the Machiavelli memorial, dripping but hallowed.
"Remember," he was saying, "the facts about this church of Santa Croce; how it was built by faith in the full fervour of medievalism, before any taint of the Renaissance had appeared.
George, rather to her relief, refused to move, and she and the old man wandered not unpleasantly about Santa Croce, which, though it is like a barn, has harvested many beautiful things inside its walls.
That we had lived to see his dust in honored sepulture in the church of Santa Croce we owed to a society of literati, and not to Florence or her rulers.
We went to the Church of Santa Croce, from time to time, in Florence, to weep over the tombs of Michael Angelo, Raphael and Machiavelli,