5
Padre Filippo was walking one day through the streets of Rome when he saw a great crowd very much excited. ‘What’s the matter?’ asked ‘good Philip.’
‘There’s a man in that house up there beating his wife fit to kill her, and for nothing at all, for she’s an angel of goodness. Nothing at all, but because she’s so ugly.’
Padre Filippo waited till the husband was tired of beating her and had gone out, and all the crowd had dispersed. Then he went up to the room where the poor woman lived, and knocked at the door. ‘Who’s there?’ said the woman.
‘Padre Filippo!’ answered ‘good Philip,’ and the woman opened quickly enough when she heard it was Padre Filippo who knocked.
But good Philip himself started back with horror when he saw her, she was so ugly. However, he said nothing, but made the sign of the cross over her, and prayed, and immediately she became as beautiful as she had been ugly; but she knew nothing, of course, of the change.
‘Your husband won’t beat you any more,’ said good Philip, as he turned to go; ‘only if he asks you who has been here send him to me.’
When the husband came home and found his wife had become so beautiful, he kissed her, and was beside himself for joy; and she could not imagine what had made him so different towards her. ‘Who has been here?’ he asked.
‘Only Padre Filippo,’ answered the wife; ‘and he said that if you asked I was to tell you to go to him;’ the husband ran off to him to thank him, and to say how sorry he was for having beaten her.
But there lived opposite a woman who was also in everything the opposite of this one. She was very handsome, but as bad in conduct as the other was good. However, when she saw the ugly wife become so handsome, she said to herself, ‘If good Philip would only make me a little handsomer than I am, it would be a good thing for me;’ and she went to Padre Filippo and asked him to make her handsomer.
Padre Filippo looked at her, and he knew what sort of woman she was, and he raised his hand and made the sign of the cross over her, and prayed, and she became ugly; uglier even than the other woman had been!
‘Why have you treated me differently from the other woman?’ exclaimed the woman, for she had brought a glass with her to be able to contemplate the improvement she expected him to make in her appearance.
‘Because beauty was of use to her in her state of life,’ answered Padre Filippo. ‘But you have only used the beauty God gave you as an occasion of sin; therefore a stumbling-block have I now removed out of your way.’
One Easter there came to him a young man of good family to confession, and Padre Filippo knew that every one had tried in vain to make him give up his mistress, and that to argue with him about it was quite useless. So he tried another tack. ‘I know it is such a habit with you to go to see her you can’t give it up, so I’m not going to ask you to. You shall go and see her as often as you like, only will you do something to please me?’
The young man was very fond of good Philip, and there was nothing he would have not done for him except to give up his mistress; so as he knew that was not in question, he answered ‘yes’ very readily.
‘You promise me to do what I say, punctually?’ asked the saint.
‘Oh, yes, father, punctually.’
‘Very well, then; all I ask is that though you go to her as often as you like, you just pass by this way and come up and pull my bell every time you go; nothing more than that.’
The young man did not think it was a very hard injunction, but when it came to performing it he felt its effect. At first he used to go three times a day, but he was so ashamed of ringing the saint’s bell so often, that very soon he went no more than once a day. That dropped to two or three times a week, then once a week, and long before next Easter he had given her up and had become all his parents could wish him to be.