The next curiosity was an ivory carving of S. Anthony preaching to the fishes, so fine and small you held it on your palm, and used a lens to look at it.  Yet there stood the Santo gesticulating, and there were the fishes in rows—­the little fishes first, and then the middle-sized, and last of all the great big fishes almost out at sea, with their heads above the water and their mouths wide open, just as the Fioretti di San Francesco describes them.  After this came some original drawings of doubtful interest, and then a case of fifty-two nielli.  These were of unquestionable value; for has not Cicognara engraved them on a page of his classic monograph?  The thin silver plates, over which once passed the burin of Maso Finiguerra, cutting lines finer than hairs, and setting here a shadow in dull acid-eaten grey, and there a high light of exquisite polish, were far more delicate than any proofs impressed from them.  These frail masterpieces of Florentine art—­the first beginnings of line engraving—­we held in our hands while Signor Folcioni read out Cicognara’s commentary in a slow impressive voice, breaking off now and then to point at the originals before us.

The sun had set, and the room was almost dark, when he laid his book down, and said:  ’I have not much left to show—­yet stay!  Here are still some little things of interest.’  He then opened the door into his bedroom, and took down from a nail above his bed a wooden Crucifix.  Few things have fascinated me more than this Crucifix—­produced without parade, half negligently, from the dregs of his collection by a dealer in old curiosities at Crema.  The cross was, or is—­for it is lying on the table now before me—­twenty-one inches in length, made of strong wood, covered with coarse yellow parchment, and shod at the four ends with brass.  The Christ is roughly hewn in reddish wood, coloured scarlet, where the blood streams from the five wounds.  Over the head an oval medallion, nailed into the cross, serves as framework to a miniature of the Madonna, softly smiling with a Correggiesque simper.  The whole Crucifix is not a work of art, but such as may be found in every convent.  Its date cannot be earlier than the beginning of the eighteenth century.  As I held it in my hand, I thought—­perhaps this has been carried to the bedside of the sick and dying; preachers have brandished it from the pulpit over conscience-stricken congregations; monks have knelt before it on the brick floor of their cells, and novices have kissed it in the vain desire to drown their yearnings after the relinquished world; perhaps it has attended criminals to the scaffold, and heard the secrets of repentant murderers; but why should it be shown me as a thing of rarity?  These thoughts passed through my mind, while Signor Folcioni quietly remarked:  ’I bought this Cross from the Frati when their convent was dissolved in Crema.’  Then he bade me turn it round, and showed a little steel knob fixed into the back between the arms.