“They have touched the coffin of St. Paul!” simply and solemnly.
While they lay over his fingers he crossed the beads, murmured some rapid words.
“My blessing will not hurt them, or you!” restoring them to me with the gentle seriousness that marked his demeanor throughout the little scene.
I thanked him earnestly. Whether he were sincere, or acting a well-conned part, his behavior to me was the perfection of high-toned courtesy, I said that he had done me a kindness, and I meant it.
“It is nothing!” was the rejoinder. “It is I who am grateful for the opportunity to render a stranger, and an American, even so slight a service.”
Some of our party made merry over my adventure; affected to see in my appreciation of the increased value of my blest baubles, deflection from the path of Protestantism rectilinear and undefiled. I think all were slightly scandalized when, turning in their walk across the nave, they saw the tableau within the sacred rail; myself, between two priests, and bending toward the open tomb of St. Paul.
To me it is a pleasing and interesting reminiscence, even if the story of Paul’s and Timothy’s tenancy of the crypt be a monkish figment. And this I am loath to admit.