ere he and the so-called "farmer" were still laughing over the
event; and in tones of ominous mildness begged to purchase that pretty
thing--the picture in oils, from which the fresco painting of the Virgin
had been made. He was a Herculean young man, and Buti, who white and
trembling had tried to slip out of his way, was so bewildered by the
offer, that he asked only the proper price for his work. The farmer,
however, broke forth in expressions of pious delight, "Mary had surely
wrought a miracle, and _converted_ the Jew!"

The Jew turned like a trodden worm. "Truly," he replied, "a miracle has
been wrought, by a power which no canvas yet possessed, in that I have
resisted the desire to throttle you. But my purchase of your picture is
not due to a miracle. It means simply that I have been cured of my
prejudices in respect to art. Christians hang up pictures of heathen
gods. Their 'Titians' paint them. A cardinal will value his Leda or his
Ganymede beyond everything else which he possesses. If I express wonder
at this sacrifice of the truth, I am told that the truth of a picture is
in its drawing and painting, and that these are valued precisely because
they _are_ true. Why then should not your Mary take her place among my
Ledas and the rest; be judged as a picture, and, since--as I
fear--Master Buti is not a Titian, laughed at accordingly?"

"So now," the speaker concludes, "Jews buy what pictures they like, and
hang them up where they please, and,"--with an inward groan--"no, boy,
you must not pelt them." This warning, which is supposed to be addressed
by the historian in his old age to a nephew with a turn for throwing
stones, reveals the motive of the story: a sudden remembrance of the
good old pious time, when Jews _might_ be pelted.

"UP AT A VILLA--DOWN IN THE CITY" is a lively description of the
amusements of the city, and the dulness of villa life, as contrasted by
an Italian of quality, who is bored to death in his country residence,
but cannot afford the town. His account of the former gives a genuine
impression of dreariness and monotony, for the villa is stuck on a
mountain edge, where the summer is scorching and the winter bleak, where
a "lean cypress" is the most conspicuous object in the foreground, and
hills "smoked over" with "faint grey olive trees" fill in the back;
where on hot days the silence is only broken by the shrill chirp of the
cicala, and the whining of bees around some adjacent firs. Bu