The quadrangle itself was crowded with people, and the sellers of votive offerings, in their booths roofed with acacia-boughs, were driving a noisy trade in scapulars and Agnus Deis, images of the Black Virgin of Oropa, silver hearts and crosses, and phials of Jordan water warranted to effect the immediate conversion of Jews and heretics.  In one corner a Carmelite missionary had set up his portable pulpit, and, crucifix in hand, was exhorting the crowd; in another, an improvisatore intoned canticles to the miraculous Virgin; a barefoot friar sat selling indulgences at the monastery gate, and pedlars with trays of rosaries and religious prints pushed their way among the pilgrims.  Young women of less pious aspect solicited the attention of the better-dressed travellers, and jugglers, mountebanks and quacks of every description hung on the outskirts of the square.  The sight speedily turned Odo’s thought from his late companion, and the litter coming to a halt he was leaning forward to observe the antics of a tumbler who had spread his carpet beneath the trees, when the abate’s face suddenly rose to the surface of the throng and his hand thrust a crumpled paper between the curtains of the litter.  Odo was quick-witted enough to capture this missive without attracting the notice of his grand-aunts, and stealing a glance at it, he read—­“Cavaliere, I starve.  When the illustrious ladies descend, for Christ’s sake beg a scudo of them for the unhappy Cantapresto.”

By this the litter had disengaged itself and was moving toward the outer gates.  Odo, aware of the disfavour with which the theatre was viewed at Donnaz, and unable to guess how far the soprano’s present habit would be held to palliate the scandal of his former connection, was perplexed how to communicate his petition to the canonesses.  A moment later, however, the question solved itself; for as the aunts descended at the door of the rector’s lodging, the porter, running to meet them, stumbled on a black mass under the arcade, and raised the cry that here was a man dropped dead.  A crowd gathering, some one called out that it was an ecclesiastic had fallen; whereat the great-aunts were hurrying forward when Odo whispered the eldest, Donna Livia, that the sick man was indeed an abate from Pianura.  Donna Livia immediately bid her servants lift him into the porter’s lodge, where, with the administering of spirits, the poor soprano presently revived and cast a drowning glance about the chamber.

“Eight years ago, illustrious ladies,” he gurgled, “I had nearly died one night of a surfeit of ortolans; and now it is of a surfeit of emptiness that I am perishing.”

The ladies at this, with exclamations of pity, called on the lay-brothers for broth and cordials, and bidding the porter enquire more particularly into the history of the unhappy ecclesiastic, hastened away with Odo to the rector’s parlour.

Next morning betimes all were afoot for the procession, which the canonesses were to witness from the monastery windows.  The apothecary had brought word that the abate, whose seizure was indeed the result of hunger, was still too weak to rise; and Donna Livia, eager to open her devotions with an act of pity, pressed a sequin in the man’s hand, and bid him spare no care for the sufferer’s comfort.