.

We stayed to hear the noon Angelus strike, and while the last stroke
was still booming around the great bell I took a step toward it and
stretched my hand out.

I was instantly snatched backward, with a profusion of excuses.

"It is said," the professor explained, "that if a bell be touched, even
with the finger-tip, while ringing, it will instantly break. I do not
know if it be true, but it is worth guarding against."

It was indeed! A fine appetite I should have had for my breakfast, at
that moment awaiting me, if I had had to reflect over it that the great
bell of the great basilica of St. Francis of Asisi had that very
morning been cracked into pieces by my fore finger! What visions of
horrified crowds of _Asisinati_, of black storms of newspaper items, of
censuring gossip the world over, would have come between me and that
purple pigeon smothered in rice which Maria had promised me! The pope
himself would have known me individually out of the cloud of his
subjects, and have frowned upon my image. And how it would have been
whispered behind me to the end of my days, "That is the lady who broke
the great bell of St. Francis"! But I had not broken it, and it still
hangs sound and strong, to send its melancholy sweet music out to meet
the centuries as they roll in storm and sunshine over the eastern
mountains. Let us be thankful for the evils which might have happened
and did not.

I cannot resist the temptation to relate a little incident concerning
this same learned Professor Cristofani, it struck me as so quaint. He
is a poor man--literature, and even teaching, do not pay very well in
Italian paesi--and he has a family. Cheaply as servants may be
employed, he could not afford one, and his wife was not very well. Last
summer the _Alpinisti_ visited Asisi, and some of the principal
members, having an introduction to him, wished to visit him. Their stay
in Asisi was short, and, being sunrise-and-mountain-top people, they
made their call at six o'clock in the morning on their way to the top
of Mount Asio, from which Asisi takes its name, and, I may here add,
the correct spelling of its name, which I have followed. A servant from
the Leone Hotel showed the visitors to the house, and very stupidly
knocked at the kitchen-door. A loud "_Avanti!_" from within answered
the knock. The door was opened by the guide, revealing a tableau. The
professor, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up and an apron tied on, was
earnestly