d paler yet he grew,
With every day some life from him seemed gone,
And all aghast, though living, men still knew
He had become a literal skeleton;
And so he died--in some world less severe
Than this to join the one he held so dear. {203b}

"'Yet no one knew when 'twas he passed away
Out of that shadowy form and 'scaped life's power,
For still 'twas seen beneath the moon's pale ray,
Or gliding through the court at twilight hour.
But there it still is seen--and so it came
The Via del Scheletro got its name.'"

There is not a word of all this which is "Protestant invention," for
though I have poetised or written up a very rude text, the narrative is
strictly as I received it. There is one point in it worth noticing, that
it is a matter of very general conviction in Italy that in such matters
of Church discipline as are involved in this story, it is the small flies
who are caught in the web, while the great ones burst buzzing through it
without harm, or that the weak and poor (who are very often those with
the best hearts and principles) are most cruelly punished, where a bold,
sensual, vulgar _frate_ makes light of and easily escapes all
accusations.

There is something sadly and strangely affecting in the conception of a
simply good and loving nature borne down by the crush of the world and
misapplied morality--or clerical celibacy--into total wretchedness--a
diamond dissolved to air. One in reading this seems to hear the sad
words of one who thought his own name was written in water:

"I am a shadow now, alas! alas!
Upon the skirts of human nature dwelling
Alone. I chant alone the holy mass,
While little signs of life are round me kneeling,
And glossy bees at noon do fieldward pass,
And many a chapel bell the hour is telling,
Paining me through: those sounds grow strange to me,
And thou art distant in Humanity!"

THE MYSTERIOUS FIG-TREE
A LEGEND OF THE VIA DEL FICO

"In every plant lie marvellous mysteries,
In every flower there is a dream divine;
The fig-tree bears the measure of a life,
And, as it leaves or fruits, our lives do pass,
And all things in each other subtly blend."

"Ha chiappato il fico--_ficum capit_."--_Old Proverbs_.

"Quidam itidem medium digitum ostendunt, idque in Hispania adhuc
dicitur fieri, et FICA appellator, hic illudendi actus, de quo Eryc.
Puteanus, _loc. cit._, p. 7