I said that would be bad commerce on my part, since I had no beard. "You, sir," I added, "have a remarkable one, which I confess I regret to see coloured."
"A fig for your regrets, little man," said the other. "Politics is the cry. If your passport described you as a middling-sized man with a black beard and a running at the nose, you'd be doing as I am. But you'll never have such a passport as that."
"My passport," I told him, "is destroyed. It described me as a young Jew with an assured manner and a pendulous nose."
This caused the Capuchin to look upon his visitor. Whether he knew me or not, then or before, he made no sign. "There's no flattery in that," he said, "but you could have done it. A manner's a manner, and there's an end; but I could swell any man's nose for him and say thank you. And what does your present passport bear?"
I said, "I have none. The Holy Office having confiscated it, ejected me from Bologna because I wore a crucifix and prayed to the Madonna."
"Ah," says he, "I've known a man hanged in that city for less. But what you say convinces me of one thing: you will be all the better for company."
"How so?" said I.
"Why," says the Capuchin, "you tell me you were talking to the Madonna."
"It is true that I was addressing her in her image."
"Very well; that's a proof positive to me that you had nobody else to address—a most unwholesome state of affairs. How does my beard strike you? Black as blackness, I fancy."