FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96  
97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   >>   >|  
kneading a mass of dough preparatory to sending it to the baker's oven, where everybody bakes their bread, and his pretty blonde young daughter was making coffee at the kitchen fire. "Well, I am a poor man, and my wife was sick," he said afterward, in telling the story, with a sad smile in his eyes, which are as blue and almost as blind as violets. These stories awaken a laugh only at the time, but gain a certain sublimity when years have gilded them--like that one of St. Bonaventura, which this reminds us of: When the two legates sent by the pope of that time to carry the scarlet beretta of a cardinal to St. Bonaventura set out in search of him, they were obliged to follow him to a little Franciscan convent at a short distance from Florence, where he had retired for devotion and to practise for a while the humble rules of his order. As these two dignified prelates came solemnly around an angle of the building they glanced through the open kitchen-window, and were astonished to see the personage they sought engaged in washing the supper-dishes. He accosted them with perfect calmness, and, learning their errand, requested them to hang the hat in a tree near by till he should have finished washing the dishes. They complied, and the pots and pans and plates having been attended to, the whole community adjourned to the chapel and the saint received the dignity of prince of the Church. The eight days' festa of Corpus Domini opened in Asisi with one of the most exquisite sights I have ever seen, the procession of the cathedral as it passed from San Francesco through Via Superba on its return to the cathedral. We took our places in a window reserved for us, and waited. There all was quiet and deserted. The air was perfumed by sprigs of green which each one had strewn before his own house. One living creature alone was visible--a little boy who knelt in the middle of the street and carefully placed small yellow flowers in the form of an immense sunflower chalked out on the pavement. Here and there, in some stairway-window, a shrine had been prepared, with its Madonna, lamp and flowers. It was near noon of a bright June day, but the houses were so high that the sun struck only on the upper stories of the north side of the street. All below was in that transparent shadow wherein objects look like pictures of themselves or like reflections in clear water. The whole street was indeed a picture, with its gray houses set in irr
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96  
97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

window

 

street

 

stories

 

Bonaventura

 
cathedral
 

houses

 

flowers

 

dishes

 

washing

 

kitchen


deserted

 

waited

 

places

 
reserved
 
living
 
creature
 

sprigs

 

perfumed

 

strewn

 

preparatory


Corpus

 

Domini

 

opened

 
dignity
 

received

 

prince

 
Church
 
exquisite
 

Francesco

 
Superba

sending
 

visible

 
passed
 

sights

 
procession
 

return

 

transparent

 
shadow
 

kneading

 

struck


objects

 
picture
 

reflections

 

pictures

 
yellow
 

immense

 

sunflower

 

middle

 
carefully
 

chalked