way. Wearying of this, because, as he said, it was poor work fencing
with bunglers, he kept us closer company for the rest 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