hael, painted by a master hand; sometimes as a beautiful young
ascetic in his monk's dress.

Is it strange that the pretty peasant-girls cast shy veiled glances at
the young lads that stroll by with a careless stare? For centuries they
have given pledges and broken them there under the dark arcade, and so
they will do for centuries to come. There will be other holidays and
other prayers at Antonio's shrine, and other girls will have ribbons
bought for them at the booths, and then there will be a couple of kisses
and a parting and a few tears, and now and then a broken heart. The
young men will take their diplomas and go out into the world, and rush
into the turmoil of the state and the senate and the court, and lose the
proud heroic bearing of their youth in cringing and fawning; or they
will settle down on their estates and marry the Marchesa Tal Quale, who
will have many quarterings and many bank-notes, and their beautiful
Greek outlines will disappear under the weight of fat proper to a landed
proprietor. The grand ideals of their youth will drop away from them one
by one, and they will laugh with contempt at their old student notions
of liberty and freedom for high and low.

Only some morning, when the children tell them it is Sant' Antonio's
Day, an old pain will rise in their hearts, and they will see the dear
old arcades of Padua and the little gay booths, and trustful eyes and
fresh girl-faces will start up in their memories; and when the
church-bells ring out they will hide their heads from the _marchesa_ and
the _marchesini_ and cry out aloud for the old happy student-time, when
love and hope of glory and high belief in God and man were theirs. God
pity them, those poor young things, in spite of all their glorious
youth! The beautiful promise of their spring will ripen into dull
mediocrity. They will learn to be false to themselves and the truth.
Happier are they who die there in old Padua in the fulness of their
youth and hope, and are borne to the great hall of the university and
are laid on the black-draped bier, with candles burning about them and
their fellow-students rising from their seats and bowing three times
before the corpse, and reading the funeral eulogy of him who is going to
his grave with the spirits of the great and good that have left their
footprints in the solemn halls for his mourning train.

[Illustration: PIAZZA DELLA ERBE.]

In the vestibule of the university, high up on the walls,