Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/85

Rh his bicycle broken to pieces, and was under the necessity of walking a long distance to the nearest railway station. It was only the fear of his enchantments as a wandering magician that saved him from personal harm.

In October, 1894, a chromolithograph of St. Anna, in a church at Naples, showed suddenly on the breast of the saint a white spot, which in the eyes of her worshipers gradually grew into the form of a lily. The rumor of this wonder caused thousands of people to flock to the sacred shrine, and several miracles were already reported, when the police ordered the print to be taken down and examined. On investigation, the white lily proved to be mold. It is hardly credible that the Neapolitan clergy should not have known the nature of this phenomenon, and yet they did nothing to expose the delusion, but made capital out of it by holding solemn services at the altar in recognition of its supposed miraculous character.

The results of such superstitious notions are not always so harmless as in the cases just cited. Thus, a peasant living at Pontea Ema, about a mile from Florence, in Tuscany, had a daughter who was subject to severe hysterical convulsions; she had also "suffered many things of many physicians," and was thereby "nothing bettered, but rather grew worse"—a result which will not surprise any one who knows what a wretched quacksalver the country doctor is in Italy. The parish priest intimated that the girl was probably possessed with a devil, and one day in February, 1893, the peasant and his daughter, after hearing several masses suitable to the occasion, went to Florence to consult a wise woman famous for sorceries, who informed him that an ordinary conjuration would cost five lire, and might not be effective, whereas the invocation of Beelzebub, which would cost twenty-five lire, would be an infallible remedy. The peasant paid the twenty-five lire and the old witch began her conjurations, dragging herself over the floor on her knees and howling fearfully. Finally she ceased, and declared that the conjuration had been successful. "Now go home," she added, "and heat the oven. The first person who comes to your door will be the one who has caused your daughter's malady; thrust this person into the oven in the presence of your daughter, and there will be no recurrence of the disease." The peasant obeyed these instructions and kept the oven heated all night. Early the next morning there was a rap at the door. "Chi è?" (Who's there?) asked the peasant. "For heaven's sake, a piece of bread!" was the reply. The peasant rushed to the door, seized the beggar woman as she stood there pale with hunger and shivering with cold, and without a moment 's hesitation put her into the heated oven. Two milkmen passing by heard her cries, and, breaking open the bolted door of