he Hofbauer knelt on one side near the altar,
and led the service, his two sons, the four men-servants, the aunt and
Moidel, with the three maid-servants, reciting the responses on their
respective sides. The even-song over, the household quietly retired to
rest.

Chance had graciously brought us to the Hof in the midst of preparations
for the festival of the Holy Father. On Sunday, June 18, the whole
Catholic world was to celebrate the astounding fact of Pio Nono having
exceeded the days of Saint Peter. We, who had come from Rome, where
thirty upstart papers were denouncing time-honored usages and formulas,
where many of the people had begun to sneer at the Papacy and to take
gloomy views of the Church, were not prepared for the religious fervor
and devotion to the Papal See which greeted us in the Tyrol, especially
at Bruneck, where from time immemorial a race of the staunchest
adherents to Rome had flourished. The mere fact that we came from the
Eternal City clothed us with brilliant but false colors. Endless were
the questions put to us about the health and looks of the Holy Father,
whom they believed to be kept in a dungeon and fed on bread and water--a
diet, however, turned into heavenly food by the angels. Perhaps the most
perplexing question of all was, whether the Herr Baron Flinkenhorn, who
had been born in exactly the same year as the Holy Father, bore the
faintest resemblance to that saintly martyr. We could but shake our
heads as the old nobleman was pointed out to us on the morning of the
festival. Decrepit and bent with age, he shuffled along by the side of
his old tottering sister, an antiquated couple dressed in the French
fashions of 1810. They hardly perceived, so blind and old were they, the
bows and greetings which they received. They knew, however, that it was
Pio's festival, and they made great offerings to the Church and to the
poor.

Deafness even has its compensations. Thus this old couple had not been
kept awake all night by the ringing of bells and the firing of small
cannon, which had continued incessantly since the setting of the sun had
ushered in the festival on the previous evening. The firing lasted all
day--a popular but very startling and disturbing mode of expressing joy
and satisfaction. Bruneck wreathed and flagged its houses: there were
processions, the prettiest being considered that of the female pupils of
the convent of the Sacred Heart, who walked in white, bearing lilies. At