it all to go over
about her mother, the blessed Saint Anne (may her name be ever
praised!). I mean no disrespect, but I am certain the saints are
reasonable folk and must see that poor folk must live, and, in order to
live, must think of something else now and then besides _them_. That's
my mind, brother."

"Well, well, sister," said the monk, placidly, "no doubt you are right.
There shall be no quarrelling in the Lord's vineyard; every one hath his
manner and place, and you follow the lead of the blessed Saint Martha,
which is holy and honorable."

"Honorable! I should think it might be!" said Elsie. "I warrant me, if
everything had been left to Saint Mary's doings, our Blessed Lord and
the Twelve Apostles might have gone supperless. But it's Martha gets all
the work, and Mary all the praise."

"Quite right, quite right," said the monk, abstractedly, while he stood
out in the moonlight busily sketching the fountain. By just such a
fountain, he thought, our Lady might have washed the clothes of the
Blessed Babe. Doubtless there was some such in the court of her
dwelling, all mossy and with sweet waters forever singing a song of
praise therein.

Elsie was heard within the house meanwhile making energetic commotion,
rattling pots and pans, and producing decided movements among the simple
furniture of the dwelling, probably with a view to preparing for the
night's repose of the guest.

Meanwhile Agnes, kneeling before the shrine, was going through with
great feeling and tenderness the various manuals and movements of
nightly devotion which her own religious fervor and the zeal of her
spiritual advisers had enjoined upon her. Christianity, when it entered
Italy, came among a people every act of whose life was colored and
consecrated by symbolic and ritual acts of heathenism. The only possible
way to uproot this was in supplanting it by Christian ritual and
symbolism equally minute and pervading. Besides, in those ages when the
Christian preacher was utterly destitute of all the help which the press
now gives in keeping under the eye of converts the great inspiring
truths of religion, it was one of the first offices of every saint whose
preaching stirred the heart of the people, to devise symbolic forms,
signs, and observances, by which the mobile and fluid heart of the
multitude might crystallize into habits of devout remembrance. The
rosary, the crucifix, the shrine, the banner, the procession, were
catechisms and t