and trailed up the steep Via di Citta, between houses like solemn cliffs, and in the midst of a throng which, in the dusk of that narrow pass, seemed like dense clouds, lit up by innumerable moons, to our lodging at an inn called Le Tre Donzelle.  These moons I found out were the wide straw hats of the lovely daughters of Siena, sisters of Aurelia, companions of her maiden hours!  It made my heart jump into my throat to see in the doorway of the inn a girl of her own tender and buoyant shape, to hear her very tones, with that caressing fall which never failed to move me, and to see the quick turn of a crowned head exactly in her own manner.  Before many hours were over I found myself stabbed more or less vividly by every young woman I met.  There was no escaping from Aurelia in Aurelia’s own city.

Indifferent alike to the orgies of my companions or to their reproaches of me for not sharing them, I spent a solitary, wakeful night in great exaltation of mind; with the first ray of dawn I was out and about, gaining in entire loneliness my first view of the sacred city.  I stood, awestruck and breathless, under the star-strewn roof of the great church; I knelt where Aurelia’s knees must have kissed the storied pavement.  I walked in the vast Campo, which has been called, and justly called, the finest piazza in Europe; wondered over the towered palace of the ancient Commune; prayed at the altar of St. Catherine.  Prepared then by prayer and meditation, I made solemn and punctilious visits to what I must call the holy places of Aurelia’s nation:  the Madonna del Bordone, the Madonna delle Grazie, and the Madonna called of Provenzano.  Before each of these ladies—­mournful, helpful, heaven-conversing deities—­I prayed devoutly, on my knees.  I anointed the feet of each with my tears, I offered up to each the incense of a sigh from my overcharged heart.  From the last and most gracious of the three ladies I received what seems to have been a remarkable counsel.

I fell into conversation with the sacristan of her church—­Santa Maria di Provenzano is its name—­who told me the tale of this wonder-working image, a mutilated bust of the Holy Virgin, veiled and crowned.  He said that his Madonna was kind to all the unfortunate world, and famous all over it, but that to the most unfortunate of all she was mother and friend.  “And whom do you call the most unfortunate of all?” I asked him.

He looked at me as he uttered these curious words.  “The most unfortunate of all, sir,” he said, “are they that have to pretend to love when they do not feel it.  And theirs is the class of which our Madonna is the patroness.”

Padrona degli Sventurati, Helper and Friend of those who must serve Love without loving!  What a Goddess was this!  I drew apart from my informant and communed alone with the mysterious Emblem.  “O most tender Advocate of them that need Thee,” said I, “O loving Mother of Sinners!  Clean Champion of the unclean, Stem, Leaf, Blossom and Fruit of the abounding promise of Heaven that a seed of hope may fructify in our ineffable corruption! cast down Thy compassionate eyes upon me too, that in their light I may strive again.”