“He flew?” I queried, my mind reverting to the much-vaunted triumphs of modern science.
“Why not? The only reason why people don’t fly like that nowadays is because—well, sir, because they can’t. They fly with machines, and think it something quite new and wonderful. And yet it’s as old as the hills! There was Iscariot, for example—Icarus, I mean——”
“Pure legend, my good man.”
“Everything becomes legend, if the gentleman will have the goodness to wait. And here is the biography of——”
“How much for Joseph of Copertino?” Cost what it may, I said to myself, that volume must be mine.
He took it up and began to turn over the pages lovingly, as though handling some priceless Book of Hours.
“A fine engraving,” he observed, sotto voce. “And this is the best of many biographies of the flying monk. It is by Rossi, the Minister-General of the Franciscan order to which our monk belonged; the official biography, it might be called—dedicated, by permission, to His Holiness Pope Clemens XIII, and based on the documents which led to the saint’s beatification. Altogether, a remarkable volume——”
And he paused awhile. Then continued:
“I possess a cheaper biography of him, also with a frontispiece, by Montanari, which has the questionable advantage of being printed as recently as 1853. And here is yet another one, by Antonio Basile—oh, he has been much written about; a most celebrated taumaturgo, (wonder-worker)! As to this Life of 1767, I could not, with a good conscience, appraise it at less than five francs.”
“I respect your feelings. But—five francs! I have certain scruples of my own, you know, and it irks my sense of rectitude to pay five francs for the flying monk unless you can supply me with six or seven additional books to be included in that sum. Twelve soldi (sous) apiece—that strikes me as the proper price of such literature, for foreigners, at least. Therefore I’ll have the great Egidio as well, and Montanari’s life of the flying monk, and that other one by Basile, and Giangiuseppe, and——”