arrested, as we should call it, or taken to prison.  A man who for any cause was to suffer imprisonment used to be told to go to prison.  Stenterello told the officer who announced his doom that it was out of the question that he should go just then:  he had to appear on the boards that night.  This was deemed to be a just impediment, and he was told to go next day.  The next day was a “festa:”  of course a sufficient reason for putting off everything.  The day after, on presenting himself at the prison-door, the actor was told that the governor of the prison was out of Florence, and he must “call again” in a few days.  When the governor returned, Stenterello was indisposed for a few days.  When he got well the governor was indisposed, and when he got well there was another “festa;” and when at last the offending actor did apply to the prison official to be imprisoned, he was told there was no room for him.  Long before that the higher authorities had totally forgotten all about the matter.  That was the way things were done in Tuscany in the good old time.

The more serious faults with which Leopold II. was chargeable were due to the narrowness of his religious bigotry, and, in the difficult and trying circumstances of the latter years of his reign, the lack of the courage needed to enable him to be truthful and to keep faith with his people.  When the frightened and fickle pope ran away from Rome, strong influences were brought to bear on the grand duke of Tuscany to induce him to refrain from following the example and to ally himself with Piedmont.  His confessor of course took the opposite side, and strove with every weapon he could bring to bear on his Serene penitent to induce him to throw in his lot with the pope.  At last the invisible world had to be appealed to.  Saint Philomena, who had been a special object of the devotion of the grand ducal family, took to appearing to the confessor, and expressing her earnest hope that her devotee would not risk the salvation of a soul in which she took so tender an interest by refusing to follow the path marked out for him by the Holy Father.  The saint became very importunate upon the subject, and each one of her celestial visitations was duly reported to the grand duke, and made the occasion of fresh exhortations on the part of the holy man who had been favored by them.  The upshot is well known:  Ciuco followed the advice of Saint Philomena and lost his dukedom.

Sometimes, however, this submission of his mind to his clergy was not altogether proof against a certain simple shrewdness, aided perhaps by an inclination to save money, to which he was said not to be insensible.  Of course his grandfather, the enlightened and reforming Duke Leopold I., had not been at all in the good graces of the Church, and for a series of years Leopold II. had been in the habit of giving a sum of money for masses for the repose of the soul of his grandfather.  But upon one occasion it happened that the archbishop