Essays on Life 



one but the original designer would follow 

 Tabachetti's Varallo design with as much 

 closeness as it has been followed here, and 

 yet make such a brilliantly successful modi- 

 fication. The stumbling, again, of one horse 

 (a detail almost hidden, according to Taba- 

 chetti's wont) is a touch which Tabachetti 

 himself might add, but which no Saas wood- 

 carver who was merely adapting from a 

 reminiscence of Tabachetti's Varallo chapel 

 would be likely to introduce. These consid- 

 erations have convinced me that the designer 

 of the chapels at Saas is none other than 

 Tabachetti himself, who, as has been now 

 conclusively shown, was a native of Dinant, 

 in Belgium. 



The Saas chronicler, indeed, avers that the 

 chapels were not built till 1709 a statement 

 apparently corroborated by a date now visible 

 on one chapel ; but we must remember that 

 the chronicler did not write until a century or 

 so later than 1709, and though, indeed, his 

 statement may have been taken from the lost 

 earlier manuscript of 1738, we know nothing 



about this either one way or the other. The 



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