The boy crossed himself and drew a quick breath, which increased the interest of his auditors.

“Ebbene!” he continued, in an impressive, awestruck whisper.  “He had to come out of his bed at night—­Santissima Maria!—­and it was the ghosts of all the people buried in San Marcuolo who dragged him and kicked him to teach him better, because he wanted to make believe the dead stayed in their graves!  So where was the use of his Latin?”

“Pierino will be like his uncle, the Abbe Morelli, some day; they say he also will be a priest.”

“I believe thee,” said Beppo, earnestly; “and that was he going in behind the banner, with the Servi.”

The little fellows made an instant rush for the door, and squeezed themselves in behind the poor old women of the neighborhood for whom festivals were perquisites, and who, maimed or deformed, knelt on the stone floor close to the entrance, while with keenly observant, ubiquitous eyes they proffered their aves and their petitions for alms with the same exemplary patience and fervor—­“Per l’amor di Dio, Signori!”

The body of the church, from the door to the great white marble screen of the choir and from column to column, was filled with an assembly in which the brilliant and scholarly elements predominated; and seen through the marvelous fretwork of this screen of leafage and scroll and statue and arch, intricately wrought and enhanced with gilding, the choir presented an almost bewildering pageant.  The dark wood background of the stalls and canopies, elaborately carved and polished and enriched with mosaics, each surmounted with its benediction of a gilded winged cherub’s head, framed a splendid figure in sacerdotal robes.  Through the small, octagonal panes of the little windows encircling the choir—­row upon row, like an antique necklace of opals set in frosted stonework—­the sunlight slanted in a rainbow mist, broken by splashes of yellow flame from great wax candles in immense golden candlesticks, rising from the floor and steps of the altar, as from the altar itself.  From great brass censers, swinging low by exquisite Venetian chainwork, fragrant smoke curled upward, crossing with slender rays of blue the gold webwork of the sunlight; and on either side golden lanterns rose high on scarlet poles, above the heads of the friars who crowded the church.

On the bishop’s throne, surrounded by the bishops of the dioceses of Venice, sat the Patriarch, who had been graciously permitted to honor this occasion, as it had no political significance; and opposite him Fra Marco Germano, the head of the order of the Frari, presided in a state scarcely less regal.

His splendid gift, the masterpiece of Titian, had been fitted into the polished marble framework over the great altar, and never had the master so excelled himself as in this glorious “Assumption.”  The beauty, the power, the persuasive sense of motion in the figure of the Madonna, which seemed divinely upborne,—­the loveliness of the infant cherubs, the group of the Apostles solemnly attesting the mysterious event,—­were singularly and inimitably impressive, full of aspiration and faith, compelling the serious recognition of the sacredness and greatness of the Christian mystery.