they will worm everything out of you.

Thinking that it was my duty to present my respectful compliments to
Monsignor Caraffa, I desired to be taken to his apartment. He gave me a
pleasant welcome, shewed me his library, and entrusted me to the care of
one of his abbes, a man of parts, who acted as my cicerone every where.
Twenty years afterwards, this same abbe was of great service to me in
Rome, and, if still alive, he is a canon of St. John Lateran.

On the following day, I took the communion in the Santa-Casa. The third
day was entirely employed in examining the exterior of this truly
wonderful sanctuary, and early the next day I resumed my journey, having
spent nothing except three paoli for the barber. Halfway to Macerata, I
overtook Brother Stephano walking on at a very slow rate. He was
delighted to see me again, and told me that he had left Ancona two hours
after me, but that he never walked more than three miles a day, being
quite satisfied to take two months for a journey which, even on foot, can
easily be accomplished in a week. "I want," he said, "to reach Rome
without fatigue and in good health. I am in no hurry, and if you feel
disposed to travel with me and in the same quiet way, Saint-Francis will
not find it difficult to keep us both during the journey."

This lazy fellow was a man about thirty, red-haired, very strong and
healthy; a true peasant who had turned himself into a monk only for the
sake of living in idle comfort. I answered that, as I was in a hurry to
reach Rome, I could not be his travelling companion.

"I undertake to walk six miles, instead of three, today," he said, "if
you will carry my cloak, which I find very heavy."