hy guests! Enter, I beseech you, and fulfil, in your
own peculiar way, the precepts which bid you not be over anxious for the
good things of this life..For eating and drinking, my kitchen and cellar
are at your service. For clothing, if any illustrious personage will
do me the honour to change his holy rags with me, here are an Indian
shawl-pelisse and a pair of silk trousers at his service. Perhaps you
will accommodate me, my handsome young captain, choragus of this new
school of the prophets?'

Philammon, who was the person addressed, tried to push by him
contemptuously.

'Allow me, sir. I lead the way. This dagger is poisoned,-a scratch and
you are dead. This dog is of the true British breed; if she seizes you,
red-hot iron will not loose her, till she hears the bone crack. If any
one will change clothes with me, all I have is at your service. If not,
the first that stirs is a dead man.'

There was no mistaking the quiet, high-bred determination of the
speaker. Had he raged and blustered, Philammon could have met him on
his own ground: but there was an easy self-possessed disdain about him,
which utterly abashed the young monk, and abashed, too, the whole crowd
of rascals at his heels.

'I'll change clothes with you, you Jewish dog!' roared a dirty fellow
out of the mob.

'I am your eternal debtor. Let us step into this side room. Walk
upstairs, my friends. Take care there, sir!--That porcelain, whole, is
worth three thousand gold pieces: broken, it is not worth three pence.
I leave it to your good sense to treat it accordingly. Now then, my
friend!' And in the midst of the raging vortex of plunderers, who
were snatching up everything which they could carry away, and breaking
everything which they could not, lie quietly divested himself of his
finery, and put on the ragged cotton tunic, and battered straw hat,
which the fellow handed over to him.

Philammon, who had had from the first no mind to plunder, stood watching
Raphael with dumb wonder; and a shudder of regret, he knew not why,
passed through him, as he Saw the mob tearing down pictures, and dashing
statues to the ground. Heathen they were, doubtless; but still, the
Nymphs and Venuses looked too lovely to be so brutally destroyed...
There was something almost humanly pitiful in their poor broken arms and
legs, as they lay about upon the pavement.... He laughed at himself for
the notion; but he could not laugh it away.

Raphael seemed to think that he