aid, it had _un' aria signorile_ in
spite of the coarse brick floor and the ugly doors and lumpy walls.
Some large dauby old paintings gave a color to the dimness, there were
a fine old oak secretary black with age, a real bishop's carved stool
with a red cushion laid on it, and a long window opening on to a view
of the wide plain with its circling mountains and its many cities and
_paesetti_--Perugia shining white from the neighboring hill; Spello and
Spoleto standing out in bold profile in the opposite direction;
Montefalco lying like a gray pile of rocks on a southern hilltop; the
village and church of Santa Maria degli Angeli nestled like a flock of
cloves in the plain; and half a dozen others.

I ordered writing-table and chair to be set before the window, and
enthroned upon the bishop's tabouret an unabridged Worcester--this
being probably his first visit to Asisi--and I was immediately at home.

The servant, Maria, whose maternal grandmother was a countess, was
making some last arrangements in the room.

"Come and see what a beautiful new moon there is," I said to her.

She came to the window and looked toward the west. "That isn't the
moon: it is a star," she said, fixing her eyes upon Venus.

It was quite characteristic of her class. They all think _forestieri_
do not know the moon from a star.

I pointed lower down, to where an ecstatic crescent was melting in the
sunset gold.

She gazed at it a moment, then said: "It is beautiful: I never noticed
it before. I never look at the sky except to see what the weather is to
be. It is for you signori to look at beautiful things, not for us
_poveretti_.--Do you see the sky in America?" she asked presently.

I assured her that we do, and that the sun, moon and stars shine in it
just as here in Italy.

She was greatly puzzled. "I thought that America was under ground," she
said.

I remembered Galileo and held my peace. Besides, in these days of
universal knowledge, when we hear scientific terms lisped by infant
lips, it is refreshing to see an example of fine old-fashioned
ignorance. Yet this woman had better manners than are to be found in
most drawing-rooms, a sweet, courteous dignity, and in matters which
came within her personal knowledge great good sense and judgment. Only
she had never learned that from the centre of the earth all directions
are up.

Of course a stranger's first visit in Asisi is to the basilica of San
Francesco, and, though I had se