"How say you, Signor?" cried the landlady, shocked at my levity, and crossing herself again and again. "Oh, you Protestants believe in nothing! What! Is it not a great miracle to raise the dead?"
"It would be, if it were true," I interrupted.
"If it were true!" she repeated. "How should it not be true? Have you not heard that the arch-priest himself believes it, that all the village believes it, that the good Ricardo the sacristan was an eye-witness of the miracle?"
"I must have better testimony than his in order to believe in the miraculous character of the story you related to me. However, I have since looked into the case myself and find it to be a gross piece of imposture."
"Imposture!" cried the hostess. "Impossible! Who has been imposing—his reverence, perhaps?"
"No," I said; "the arch-priest was only one of the dupes. His rascal of a sacristan was at the bottom of all the mischief. That scoundrel Peppe, too, was another prominent actor in the farce."
"What do I hear?" exclaimed my landlady; "the pious Ricardo and the holy Peppe called 'rascal' and 'scoundrel.' You surely mistake their characters."
"We are all liable to make mistakes sometimes," said I; "but I will hope, for their own sakes, that they are not as black as they appear."
"You mystify me, Signor," she replied; "but I am sure you must be labouring under a gross mistake, for as a proof of Peppe's being a holy man, he has been doing nothing but miracles since he was raised from the dead."
"What is that you say?" cried I, pricking up my ears.