rious attempt of the Florentines to do doubtful honor to the
great citizen whose hereditary civic rights they restored too late
(about the time he was drawing nigh his "good end" at Arqua), was made
for them by a certain monk of Portagruaro named Tommaso Martinelli. He
had a general instruction from his employers to bring away from Arqua
"any important thing of Petrarch's" that he could; and it occurred to
this ill-advised friar to "move his bones." He succeeded on a night of
the year 1630 in stealing the dead poet's arm. The theft being at once
discovered, the Venetian Republic rested not till the thief was also
discovered; but what became of the arm or of the sacrilegious monk
neither the Signor Leoni nor the old women of Arqua give any account.
The Republic removed the rest of Petrarch's body, which is now said to
be in the Royal Museum of Madrid.

I was willing to know more of this quaint village of Arqua, and I rang
at the parish priest's door to beg of him some account of the place,
if any were printed. But already at one o'clock he had gone to bed for
a nap, and must on no account be roused till four. It is but a quiet
life men lead in Arqua, and their souls are in drowsy hands. The
amount of sleep which this good man gives himself (if he goes to bed
at 9 P.M. and rises at 9 A.M., with a nap of three hours during the
day) speaks of a quiet conscience, a good digestion, and uneventful
days. As I turned this notion over in my mind, my longing to behold
his reverence increased, that I might read life at Arqua in the smooth
curves of his well-padded countenance. I thought it must be that
his "bowels of compassion were well-rounded," and, making sure of
absolution, I was half-minded, if I got speech with him, to improve
the occasion by confessing one or two of my blackest sins.

Ought I to say here that, on the occasion of a second visit to Arqua,
I succeeded in finding this excellent ecclesiastic wide awake at two
o'clock in the afternoon, and that he granted me an interview at that
hour? Justice to him, I think, demands this admission of me. He was
not at all a fat priest, as I had prefigured him, but rather of a
spare person, and of a brisk and lively manner. At the village inn,
after listening half an hour to a discourse on nothing but white wine
from a young priest, who had stopped to drink a glass of it, I was
put in the way of seeing the priest of Arqua by the former's courtesy.
Happily enough, his reverence c