that was Don Ambrogio Morelli that just went in
with a lady--our old Abbe from the school at San Marcuolo--Beppo goes
there now! And don't some of us remember Pierino--always studying and
good for nothing, and not knowing enough to wade out of a _rio_? The
Madonna will have hard work to look after _him_!"

"Don Ambrogio just wants to cram us boys," Beppo confessed, in a
confidential tone; "but it's no use knowing too much, even for a priest.
For once, at San Marcuolo--true as true, faith of the Madonna!--one of
those priests told the people one day in his sermon that there were no
ghosts!"

The boy crossed himself and drew a quick breath, which increased the
interest of his auditors.

"_Ebbene_!" he continued, in an impressive, awestruck whisper. "He had
to come out of his bed at night--Santissima Maria!--and it was the
ghosts of all the people buried in San Marcuolo who dragged him and
kicked him to teach him better, because he wanted to make believe the
dead stayed in their graves! So where was the use of his Latin?"

"Pierino will be like his uncle, the Abbe Morelli, some day; they say he
also will be a priest."

"I believe thee," said Beppo, earnestly; "and that was he going in
behind the banner, with the Servi."

The little fellows made an instant rush for the door, and squeezed
themselves in behind the poor old women of the neighborhood for whom
festivals were perquisites, and who, maimed or deformed, knelt on the
stone floor close to the entrance, while with keenly observant,
ubiquitous eyes they proffered their _aves_ and their petitions for alms
with the same exemplary patience and fervor--"Per l'amor di Dio,
Signori!"

The body of the church, from the door to the great white marble screen
of the choir and from column to column, was filled with an assembly in
which the brilliant and scholarly elements predominated; and seen
through the marvelous fretwork of this screen of leafage and scroll and
statue and arch, intricately wrought and enhanced with gilding, the
choir presented an almost bewildering pageant. The dark wood background
of the stalls and canopies, elaborately carved and polished and enriched
with mosaics, each surmounted with its benediction of a gilded winged
cherub's head, framed a splendid figure in sacerdotal robes. Through the
small, octagonal panes of the little windows encircling the choir--row
upon row, like an antique necklace of opals set in frosted
stonework--the sunlight slanted