ress of his fervour. It was as if the springtime
had come about him; life was before him, gay and joyful, sorrow and pain
were unknown. He sank to his knees before the image, and as he knelt,
suddenly the Virgin lifted her foot and, loosening her golden slipper,
cast it into the old man's ragged bosom, as if giving alms for his
music.

The poor old man, astounded at the miracle, told himself that the
Blessed Virgin knew how to pay a poor devil who amused her. Overcome by
gratitude, he thanked the giver with all his heart.

He would fain have kept the treasure, but he was starving, and it seemed
to have been given him to relieve his distress. He hurried out to the
market and went into a goldsmith's shop to offer his prize. But the
man recognized it at once. Then was the poor old fiddler worse off than
before, for now he was charged with the dreadful crime of sacrilege. The
old man told the story of the miracle over and over again, but he was
laughed at for an impudent liar. He must not hope, they told him, for
anything but death, and in the short space of one hour he was tried and
condemned and on his way to execution.

The place of death was just opposite the great bronze doors of the
cathedral which sheltered the Virgin. "If I must die," said the fiddler,
"I would sing one song to my old fiddle at the feet of the Virgin and
pray one prayer before her. I ask this in her blessed name, and you
cannot refuse me."

They could not deny the prisoner a dying prayer, and, closely guarded,
the tattered figure once more entered the cathedral which had been
so disastrous to him. He approached the altar of the Virgin, his eyes
filling with tears as again he held his old fiddle in his hands. Then
he played and sang as before, and again a breath as of springtime stole
into the shadowy cathedral and life seemed glad and beautiful. When the
music ceased, again the Virgin lifted a foot and softly she flung her
other slipper into the fiddler's bosom, before the astonished gaze of
the guards. Everyone there saw the miracle and could not but testify to
the truth of the old man's former statement; he was at once freed from
his bonds and carried before the city fathers, who ordered his release.

And it is said that, in memory of the miracle of the Virgin, the priests
provided for the old fiddler for the rest of his days. In return for
this the old man surrendered the golden slippers, which, it is also
said, the reverend fathers carefull