mbino. Poor little thing! it was all one to it whether one or a
hundred candles were burning beside it: it had eyes, but saw not. It was
bandaged, as all Italian children are, from head to foot, the swathings
enveloping both arms and legs, displaying only its little feet at one
extremity, and its round chubby face at the other. But what a blaze! On
its little head was a golden crown, burning with brilliants; and from
top to toe it was stuck so full of jewels, that it sparkled and
glittered as if it had been but one lustrous gem throughout.

Two women, who had taken the opportunity of an Inglise visiting the
idol, now entered, leading betwixt them a little child, and all three
dropped on their knees before the Bambino. I begged the monk to inform
me why these women were here on their knees, and praying. "They are
worshipping the Bambino," he replied. "Oh! worshipping, are they?" I
exclaimed, in affected surprise; "how stupid I am; I took it for a piece
of wood." "And so it is," rejoined the monk; "but it is miraculous; it
is full of divine virtue, and works cures." "Has it wrought any of
late?" I inquired. "It has," replied the religioso; "it cured a woman of
dropsy two weeks ago." "In what quarter of Rome did she live?" I asked.
"She lived in the Vatican," replied the Franciscan. "We have some great
doctors in the city I come from," I said; "we have some who can take off
an arm, or a leg, or a nose, without your feeling the slightest pain;
but we have no doctor like this little doctor. But, pray tell me, why do
you permit the cardinals or the Pope ever to die, when the Bambino can
cure them?" The monk turned sharply round, and gave me a searching
stare, which I stood with imperturbable gravity; and then, taking me for
either a very dull or a very earnest questioner, he proceeded to explain
that the cure did not depend altogether on the power of the Bambino, but
also somewhat on the faith of the patient. "Oh, I see how it is," I
replied. "But pardon me yet farther; you say the Bambino is of wood, and
that these honest women are praying to it. Now I have been taught to
believe that we ought not to worship wood." To make sure both of my
interrogatories and of the monk's answers, I had been speaking to him
through my friend Mr Stewart, whose long residence in Rome had made him
perfectly master of the Italian tongue. "Oh," replied the Franciscan,
"_all Christians here worship it_." But now the signs had become very
manifest t