Interior of the Duomo during the Lenten preaching. "When Baldassare pushed behind the curtain and saw the interior of the Duomo before him, he gave a start of astonishment, and stood still before the doorway. He had expected to see a vast nave empty of anything except lifeless emblems, with perhaps a few worshippers in the distant choir, and he saw instead a vast multitude of warm living faces upturned in breathless silence towards the pulpit." - Romola