Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/134

104 drank each other's health in a glass of punch at the Café de la Concorde, was, "This year I shall see Richard!"

On the first Sunday of the year I went to hear Mass at Saint Philip Neri, and then went to the post-office, where a small boy pushed up against me and stole my beloved picture of Richard out of my pocket. I did not feel him do it, but a horrible idea of having lost the picture came over me. I felt for it, and it was gone! I had a beautiful gold chain in my pocket, and a purse with £25; yet the young rascal never touched them, but seemed to know that I should care only for the portrait. I instantly rushed off to every crier in the town; had two hundred affiches printed and stuck up in every corner; I put a paragraph in the papers; I asked every priest to give it out in the pulpit; the police, the post-office, every corner of the town was warned. Of course I pretended it was a picture of my brother. After three agonizing days and nights an old woman brought it back, the frame gone, the picture torn, rubbed, and smeared, which partly effaced the expression of the face and made it look as if it knew where it had been and how it had been defiled. The story was that her little boy had found it in that state in a dirty alley; and thinking it was a picture of Jesus Christ or a saint, took it home to his little brother to keep him good when he was naughty, and threw it in their toy cupboard. A poor priest happened to dine with this poor family, and mentioned the affiche, in which the words ufficiale Inglese as large as my head appeared. The boys then produced the