“Well, well, at your leisure.”
When the dinner was ready, the mistress of the house made Lucy sit down with them at the table, and helping her to a wing of the chicken, entreated her to eat. The husband began to dilate with much animation on the events of the day; not without many interruptions from the children, who stood round the table eating their dinner, and who had seen too many extraordinary things to be satisfied with playing the part of mere listeners. He described the solemn ceremonies, and then recurred to the miraculous conversion; but that which had made the most impression on his mind, and of which he spoke the oftenest, was the sermon of the cardinal.
“To see him before the altar,” said he, “a lord like him, to see him before the altar, as a simple curate——”
“And that golden thing he had on his head,” said one of the little girls.
“Hush, be quiet. When one thinks, I say, that a lord like him, a man so learned, who, as they say, has read all the books in the world, a thing which no one else has done, not even in Milan; when one thinks that he has adapted himself so to the comprehension of others, that every one understood him——”
“I understood, I did,” said the other little chatterer.
“Hush, be quiet. What did you understand, you?”
“I understood that he explained the Gospel, instead of the curate.”
“Be quiet. I do not say that he was understood by those only who know something, but even those who were the most stupid and ignorant, caught the sense perfectly. You might go now, and ask them to repeat his discourse; perhaps they might not remember a single word, but they would have its whole meaning in their head. And how easy it was to perceive that he alluded to this signor, although he never pronounced his name! But one might have guessed it from the tears which flowed from his eyes. And all the people wept——”
“That is true,” cried the little boy. “But why did they all cry like little children?”