running through the alleys, joyful,
his ears standing out like horns. He bowed to the Countess Martin.

"I have, then, to say farewell to you, Madame."

He intended to remain in Italy. A lady was calling him, he said: it was
Rome. He wanted to see the cardinals. One of them, whom people praised
as an old man full of sense, would perhaps share the ideas of the
socialist and revolutionary church. Choulette had his aim: to plant on
the ruins of an unjust and cruel civilization the Cross of Calvary, not
dead and bare, but vivid, and with its flowery arms embracing the world.
He was founding with that design an order and a newspaper. Madame Martin
knew the order. The newspaper was to be sold for one cent, and to be
written in rhythmic phrases. It was a newspaper to be sung. Verse,
simple, violent, or joyful, was the only language that suited the
people. Prose pleased only people whose intelligence was very subtle. He
had seen anarchists in the taverns of the Rue Saint Jacques. They spent
their evenings reciting and listening to romances.

And he added:

"A newspaper which shall be at the same time a song-book will touch the
soul of the people. People say I have genius. I do not know whether they
are right. But it must be admitted that I have a practical mind."

Miss Bell came down the steps, putting on her gloves:

"Oh, darling, the city and the mountains and the sky wish you to lament
your departure. They make themselves beautiful to-day in order to make
you regret quitting them and desire to see them again."

But Choulette, whom the dryness of the Tuscan climate tired, regretted
green Umbria and its humid sky. He recalled Assisi. He said:

"There are woods and rocks, a fair sky and white clouds. I have walked
there in the footsteps of good Saint Francis, and I transcribed his
canticle to the sun in old French rhymes, simple and poor."

Madame Martin said she would like to hear it. Miss Bell was already
listening, and her face wore the fervent expression of an angel
sculptured by Mino.

Choulette told them it was a rustic and artless work. The verses were
not trying to be beautiful. They were simple, although uneven, for the
sake of lightness. Then, in a slow and monotonous voice, he recited the
canticle.

"Oh, Monsieur Choulette," said Miss Bell, "this canticle goes up to
heaven, like the hermit in the Campo Santo of Pisa, whom some one saw
going up the mountain that the goats liked. I will tell you. The old