“But the treasure heaped upon it dazzled them. They might have fought over it like Cain and Abel. So the house moved on.”
“And yet even Leopardi chanted the Madonna,” I said.
“Lo credo,” said the beadle, unastonished. “And there is still an inscription on the hill, but it does not console the neighbourhood any more than the chapel at Ravinizza.”
“The chapel at Ravinizza?”
“Did I not say? That was where it stopped first—near Dalmatia.”
“Quite a wandering Jew-house,” I murmured.
“That was in 1291, when the Holy Land fell into the power of the Infidel”
“Ah, that was why it left Palestine!”
“Naturally. And you may imagine the agony of the Dalmatians when they returned from the Crusades to find the Holy House no longer in Ravinizza. Even to-day the pilgrims sail out in little boats singing, ‘Return to us, Maria, with thy house!’ But how could it return to Dalmatia, seeing that seventy-five years before it left Palestine the blessed St. Francis had foretold its coming here by his word Picenum, which is a region on our side of the Adriatic, and being, moreover, interpreted by Latin scholars is a prophetic acrostic?”
“It seems a pity the house did not come straight to Loreto,” I ventured.