e of Christian duty by the precepts of an old priest named Hermolaus.
Pantaleone now began to heal the sick and to preach the Gospel, and even
at times to perform miracles. Information as to his conduct having reached
the Emperor's ears, Maximian gave the young physician the choice of
renouncing Christianity or of suffering death, whereat Pantaleone boldly
declared he would rather die than apostatize. Thereupon the Saint,
together with the Christian priest Hermolaus, was bound to an olive tree
and beheaded with a sword. The story of his martyrdom has been frequently
treated in Venetian art, for as an eastern Saint Pantaleone has a church
dedicated to him in Venice, wherein the brush of Paul Veronese has painted
in glowing colours the chief incidents of his life and death. As in the
case of other physician-saints of the Roman Church--St Roch, St Cosmo and
St Damiano--Pantaleone was especially besought in cases of the plague,
which owing to the intercommunication between Amalfi and the Orient,
frequently ravaged the towns of this coast.

[Illustration: A STREET IN RAVELLO]

From the Cathedral we proceeded to visit the quaint little church of Santa
Maria del Gradillo, that with its oriental-looking towers and cupolas
affords a pleasing example of the mixed Lombard and Saracenic style which
was in vogue in the years when the house of Hohenstaufen were masters of
Southern Italy. We found little that was worth seeing inside the building,
except the pretty black-eyed daughter of the toothless tottering old
sacristan, who slunk off grumbling on his child's appearance, leaving her
to do the honours of the place. Her merry face with its welcoming smile
and her modest loquacity excited our interest, and in answer to our
questions we gathered that she was twenty years old, and was still
unmarried, not for lack of opportunity, she naively told us, but because
she was unwilling to leave her old parents, who had no one in the world
but herself to attend to them. Coming to the door of the church, Angela
(for that was her name) pointed out her home, a little white-washed
cottage with a heavily barred window over-hanging the grass-grown lane. We
wished our pleasant companion a warm good-bye, or rather _a riverderla_,
at the entrance of the dwelling, where through the open doorway we could
espy a small sun-smitten courtyard tenanted by a wizened old woman sitting
in the shade of an orange tree, by three cats, and by a large family of
sk