of the journey, and was most entertaining.  He talked, he joked, he told tales, he told lies.  He was shrewd, caustic, tender, witty, extravagant, uproarious, turn and turn about, but he never lost sight of his aim.  Probably there never was a man of looser conversation who kept a tighter hold upon the direction of his discourse.  The end of all his oratory came when he made us, his pupils as he called us, acquainted with his plans.

“This festa,” he said, “whither we go, will bring all the world to Prato, if it have not done so already; and as this same world is the orange which I and you, my apprentices, propose to suck, let us lose no time in getting our teeth well into the rind.  In this way, namely:  there are three days’ junketing before us, to which we will minister exactly what the revellers need.  Tomorrow, when they translate the blessed remains of Santa Caterina de’ Ricci, we shall sell objects of devotion to the faithful.”  As we were now sitting by the roadside for our midday meal, he produced a variety of objects from a bag at his feet.

“Observe,” he continued, “these images—­lilies, bambini, nourishing matrons, curly-headed deacons; these flaming hearts, these hearts stuck upon swords:  a holy traffic indeed!  Here, too,” and he extricated a budget tied in blue tape-ribbon, “are the lives of all the frati worthy of record, and of a good few, between you and me and this damsel, not to be found recorded.  Here, in this napkin, is everything requisite to make Santa Caterina de’ Ricci the happiest of dead ladies—­as, portraits of her mother, of her mother’s sisters, of her father and all his relatives, of the young man who drowned himself at Pontassieve for her love, and of that other young man who, on the contrary, did not, but made himself a priest and became her spiritual director.  Here are the palace in which she was born, the escutcheon of the De’ Ricci which she despised, her governess’s house, the convent where she made her vows, and the cell where, if she did not die, she might very easily have died.  Here you have the great doctors and captains of the Dominican Order, here is Albert the Great, here seraphic Thomas, here murdered Peter, here Catherine, here Rose—­admirable engravings, as you see, mostly after the admired John.  Here then is our day’s work cut out for us—­a happy toil!  On the next, having done our humble service to the souls of all these persons, we must be careful not to forget their bodily needs.  I shall exercise my skill in dentistry for trifling rewards, and you, my young Aesculapius, will prove to others, as you have already proved to me, that the strong wrist and willing arm are not lacking among your personal endowments.  I am persuaded that these duties will occupy the whole of the second day, for Prato will be full to suffocation by that time, and there will hardly be a head whose recesses we may not have to explore.  By these means, having secured (as I hope) the public confidence, the time will be