Nothing more was discoverable; wherefore the learned of the Church —­i dotti della chiesa—­came to the conclusion that under the guise of a friar there had actually appeared “N.  S. G. C.” The Supreme Pontiff and his prelates had not yet delivered a judgment in the matter, but there could be no sort of doubt that they would pronounce the authenticity of the miracle.  With a general assurance that the good Christian will be saved and the unrepentant will be damned, this remarkable little pamphlet came to an end.  Much verbiage I have omitted, but the translation, as far as it goes, is literal.  Doubtless many a humble Tarentine spelt it through that evening, with boundless wonder, and thought such an intervention of Providence worthy of being talked about, until the next stabbing case in his street provided a more interesting topic.

Possibly some malevolent rationalist might note that the name of the railway station where this miracle befell was nowhere mentioned.  Was it not open to him to go and make inquiries at Loreto?

CHAPTER VI

THE TABLE OF THE PALADINS

For two or three days a roaring north wind whitened the sea with foam; it kept the sky clear, and from morning to night there was magnificent sunshine, but, none the less, one suffered a good deal from cold.  The streets were barer than ever; only in the old town, where high, close walls afforded a good deal of shelter, was there a semblance of active life.  But even here most of the shops seemed to have little, if any, business; frequently I saw the tradesman asleep in a chair, at any hour of daylight.  Indeed, it must be very difficult to make the day pass at Taranto.  I noticed that, as one goes southward in Italy, the later do ordinary people dine; appetite comes slowly in this climate.  Between colazione at midday and pranzo at eight, or even half-past, what an abysm of time!  Of course, the Tarantine never reads; the only bookshop I could discover made a poorer display than even that at Cosenza—­it was not truly a bookseller’s at all, but a fancy stationer’s.  How the women spend their lives one may vainly conjecture.  Only on Sunday did I see a few of them about the street; they walked to and from Mass, with eyes on the ground, and all the better-dressed of them wore black.

When the weather fell calm again, and there was pleasure in walking, I chanced upon a trace of the old civilization which interested me more than objects ranged in a museum.  Rambling eastward along the outer shore, in the wilderness which begins as soon as the town has disappeared, I came to a spot as uninviting as could be imagined, great mounds of dry rubbish, evidently deposited here by the dust-carts of Taranto; luckily, I continued my walk beyond this obstacle, and after a while became aware that I had entered upon a road—­a short piece of well-marked road, which began and ended