Page:Maurice Hewlett--Little novels of Italy.djvu/60

48 "Hey, Excellency," cried the other, "there are many devout souls in the same case."

Can Grande pished. "Devout jellyfish," he grunted; and then—"She seems to haunt one quarter, eh?"

"It is so, Excellency, save that yesterday she must have passed through the Porta San Zeno unseen of the guard."

"Have you interrogated the guard?" asked the tyrant, sharply.

"It was done, Highness. Nothing entered between Compline and Prime but a couple of bullock-carts and a cavalcade of merchants from Brescia."

"What was in the bullock-carts, bishop?"

"Birch-bark, Excellency, for the yards."

"H'm!" was all Can Grande had to say to this.

He changed the conversation. "I have had the warden of the Minorites and the provincial of the Dominicans here this morning," he said, "about that accursed business of the rag-picker's wife. It is another example of what I told you just now, that these people attribute what they cannot understand to persons they can only dream about. They put down the whole of your miracles to a special reward for their zeal in hounding down the Carmelite and his mistress. They want the order expelled; I think they would like the house razed and the church washed out with holy water, or Fra Battista's blood—the latter for choice. Now, I cannot pull down religious houses, lord of Verona though I be, because a herd of frightened peasants have gone capering over the city singing, 'Salve festa dies.' I must