Well, my mother and I were, aimlessly but much admiringly, wandering about the vast spaces of the cathedral when we became aware of a funzione of some sort—­a service as we should say—­being conducted in a far part of the building.  There was no great crowd, but a score or two of spectators, mainly belonging to the gamin category, were standing around the officiating priests and curiously looking on.  We went towards the spot, and found that the burial service was being performed over the body of a young priest.  The body lay on its back on the open bier, clad in full canonicals and with the long tasselled cap of the secular clergy on his head.  We stood and gazed with the others, when suddenly I saw the dead man’s head slightly move!  A shiver, I confess, ran through me.  A moment’s reflection, however, reminded me of the recognised deceitfulness of the eyes in such matters, and I did not doubt that I had been mistaken.  But the next minute I again saw the dead priest slightly shake his head, and this time I was sure that I was not mistaken.  I clutched my mother’s arm and pointed, and again saw the awful phenomenon, which sent a cold wave through both of us from head to foot.  But nobody save ourselves seemed to have seen anything unusual.  The service was proceeding in its wonted order.  Doubting whether it might possibly be one of those horrible cases of suspended animation and mistaken death, I was thinking whether it were not my duty to call attention to the startling thing we had seen, and had with outstretched neck and peering eyes advanced a step for further observation, and with the half-formed purpose of declaring aloud that the man was not dead, when I spied crouched beneath the bier a little monkey, some nine or ten years old, who had taken in his hand the tassel of the cap, which hung down between the wooden bars which formed the bier, and was amusing himself with slowly swaying it forwards and backwards, and had thus communicated the motion to the dead man’s head!  It was almost impossible to believe that the little urchin had been able to reach the position he occupied without having been observed by any of the clerical attendants, of whom several were present, and still more difficult to suppose that no one of them had seen what we saw, standing immediately in front of the corpse while one of them performed the rite of lustration with holy water, the vessel containing which was held by another.  But no one interfered, and none but those who know the Florentines as well as I know them can feel how curiously and intensely characteristic of them was the fact that no one did so.  The awful reverence for death which would have impelled an Englishman of almost any social position to feel indignation and instantly put a stop to what he would consider a profanation, was absolutely unknown to all those engaged in that perfunctory rite.  A certain amount of trouble and disturbance would have been caused by dislodging the culprit, and each man there felt only this; that it didn’t matter a straw, and that there was no reason for him to take the trouble of noticing it.  As far as I could observe, the amusement the little wretch derived from his performance was entirely unsocial, and confined to his own breast; for I could not see that any of the gamin fraternity noticed it, or cared about it, any more than their seniors.