“Now, brother Antonio,” said Elsie, “if you begin to talk to the child about such matters, our Lady alone knows when we shall get to bed.  I am sure I’m as good a Christian as anybody; but, as I said, there’s reason in all things, and one cannot always be wondering and inquiring into heavenly matters,—­as to every feather in Saint Michael’s wings, and as to our Lady’s girdle and shoe-strings and thimble and work-basket; and when one gets through with our Lady, then one has it all to go over about her mother, the blessed Saint Anne (may her name be ever praised!).  I mean no disrespect, but I am certain the saints are reasonable folk and must see that poor folk must live, and, in order to live, must think of something else now and then besides them.  That’s my mind, brother.”

“Well, well, sister,” said the monk, placidly, “no doubt you are right.  There shall be no quarrelling in the Lord’s vineyard; every one hath his manner and place, and you follow the lead of the blessed Saint Martha, which is holy and honorable.”

“Honorable!  I should think it might be!” said Elsie.  “I warrant me, if everything had been left to Saint Mary’s doings, our Blessed Lord and the Twelve Apostles might have gone supperless.  But it’s Martha gets all the work, and Mary all the praise.”

“Quite right, quite right,” said the monk, abstractedly, while he stood out in the moonlight busily sketching the fountain.  By just such a fountain, he thought, our Lady might have washed the clothes of the Blessed Babe.  Doubtless there was some such in the court of her dwelling, all mossy and with sweet waters forever singing a song of praise therein.

Elsie was heard within the house meanwhile making energetic commotion, rattling pots and pans, and producing decided movements among the simple furniture of the dwelling, probably with a view to preparing for the night’s repose of the guest.

Meanwhile Agnes, kneeling before the shrine, was going through with great feeling and tenderness the various manuals and movements of nightly devotion which her own religious fervor and the zeal of her spiritual advisers had enjoined upon her.  Christianity, when it entered Italy, came among a people every act of whose life was colored and consecrated by symbolic and ritual acts of heathenism.  The only possible way to uproot this was in supplanting it by Christian ritual and symbolism equally minute and pervading.  Besides, in those ages when the Christian preacher was utterly destitute of all the help which the press now gives in keeping under the eye of converts the great inspiring truths of religion, it was one of the first offices of every saint whose preaching stirred the heart of the people, to devise symbolic forms, signs, and observances, by which the mobile and fluid heart of the multitude might crystallize into habits of devout remembrance.  The rosary, the crucifix, the shrine, the banner, the procession, were catechisms and tracts invented for those who could not read, wherein the substance of pages was condensed and gave itself to the eye and the touch.  Let us not, from the height of our day, with the better appliances which a universal press gives us, sneer at the homely rounds of the ladder by which the first multitudes of the Lord’s followers climbed heavenward.