On the following day, I took the communion in the Santa-Casa.  The third day was entirely employed in examining the exterior of this truly wonderful sanctuary, and early the next day I resumed my journey, having spent nothing except three paoli for the barber.  Halfway to Macerata, I overtook Brother Stephano walking on at a very slow rate.  He was delighted to see me again, and told me that he had left Ancona two hours after me, but that he never walked more than three miles a day, being quite satisfied to take two months for a journey which, even on foot, can easily be accomplished in a week.  “I want,” he said, “to reach Rome without fatigue and in good health.  I am in no hurry, and if you feel disposed to travel with me and in the same quiet way, Saint-Francis will not find it difficult to keep us both during the journey.”

This lazy fellow was a man about thirty, red-haired, very strong and healthy; a true peasant who had turned himself into a monk only for the sake of living in idle comfort.  I answered that, as I was in a hurry to reach Rome, I could not be his travelling companion.

“I undertake to walk six miles, instead of three, today,” he said, “if you will carry my cloak, which I find very heavy.”

The proposal struck me as a rather funny one; I put on his cloak, and he took my great-coat, but, after the exchange, we cut such a comical figure that every peasant we met laughed at us.  His cloak would truly have proved a load for a mule.  There were twelve pockets quite full, without taken into account a pocket behind, which he called ‘il batticulo’, and which contained alone twice as much as all the others.  Bread, wine, fresh and salt meat, fowls, eggs, cheese, ham, sausages—­everything was to be found in those pockets, which contained provisions enough for a fortnight.

I told him how well I had been treated in Loretto, and he assured me that I might have asked Monsignor Caraffa to give me letters for all the hospitals on my road to Rome, and that everywhere I would have met with the same reception.  “The hospitals,” he added, “are all under the curse of Saint-Francis, because the mendicant friars are not admitted in them; but we do not mind their gates being shut against us, because they are too far apart from each other.  We prefer the homes of the persons attached to our order; these we find everywhere.”

“Why do you not ask hospitality in the convents of your order?”

“I am not so foolish.  In the first place, I should not be admitted, because, being a fugitive, I have not the written obedience which must be shown at every convent, and I should even run the risk of being thrown into prison; your monks are a cursed bad lot.  In the second place, I should not be half so comfortable in the convents as I am with our devout benefactors.”

“Why and how are you a fugitive?”