XXVI

Fra Paolo was fast becoming a centre of romance, so many were the attempts from suspicious quarters to manage private interviews which the Senate had thought necessary to frustrate; and the fact that he was known to have declined the escort of guards which the Senate urged upon him as means of safety endowed him with a sort of heroic halo in the eyes of the lesser multitude.  “Fate largo a Fra Paolo,” they called in the Merceria if the people pressed him too closely—­“Make way for Fra Paolo!”—­and a strange youthfulness, as of satisfied affections, was beginning to grow upon his calm face.  He had had no cravings, feeling that duty sufficed; yet, through this absolute yielding of himself to express the message with which his life was charged, his heart had warmed within him, and now, unsought, the people loved him, magnifying the interest of every minor happening of his life and zealously gathering anecdotes of the days before he was great.

A group of his brother friars were strolling back and forth under the fretted colonnades of the greater court of the Servi one evening before vespers, a glow of relish on their genial, cowled faces, rehearsing the tale of Fra Paolo’s unconventional slippers; for it was the hour of small gossip, and the day had been warm.

“They were scarlet, like an eminence’s,” explained Fra Giulio, who had secured this choice bit for the entertainment of his special cronies; “for all colors are one to Fra Paolo, who hath no distinction for trifles.”

“Because he spendeth himself in scheming for honors that belong elsewhere,” interposed a disaffected brother who had strolled up and joined the group uninvited; he belonged to another chapter of the Servi, and had but recently come among them; honors had passed him by and duties attracted him less, and he had made no friends within the convent, though he professed great interest in all that concerned Fra Paolo, and had even offered to wait upon him in chapel or in his cell.

“Thou, Fra Antonio, seek thine own friends!” Fra Giulio retorted, with unusual asperity; “for this tale is too good for thine hearing, being another triumph for Fra Paolo in the days when he was only a frate of the Servi.”

“Ebbene, and then?” urged the eager auditors, crowding around the speaker, for the incongruity of the grave padre, in his frayed and rusty gown attempting to usurp a decoration, lent interest to the petty happening.

“Ebbene, and then his Eminence of Borromeo—­for it seemeth that only the illustrious play parts in this farce”—­Fra Giulio continued with keen enjoyment, “his Eminence of Borromeo hath explained at Rome that Fra Paolo was innocent of contempt of rule.”

“Verily, the fault might have been counted to one who hath no sins of the body to atone for!” sneered Fra Antonio, who could not be converted to the prevailing tone of admiration for this abnormal being who walked among them not as other men, and toward whom his own attitude was a singular compound of obsequiousness and cynicism.  “Even the slippers of your saint can do no wrong,” he added venomously.