5
Padre Filippo was walking one day through the streets of Rome when he saw a great crowd very much excited. ‘What’s the matter?’ asked ‘good Philip.’
‘There’s a man in that house up there beating his wife fit to kill her, and for nothing at all, for she’s an angel of goodness. Nothing at all, but because she’s so ugly.’
Padre Filippo waited till the husband was tired of beating her and had gone out, and all the crowd had dispersed. Then he went up to the room where the poor woman lived, and knocked at the door. ‘Who’s there?’ said the woman.
‘Padre Filippo!’ answered ‘good Philip,’ and the woman opened quickly enough when she heard it was Padre Filippo who knocked.
But good Philip himself started back with horror when he saw her, she was so ugly. However, he said nothing, but made the sign of the cross over her, and prayed, and immediately she became as beautiful as she had been ugly; but she knew nothing, of course, of the change.
‘Your husband won’t beat you any more,’ said good Philip, as he turned to go; ‘only if he asks you who has been here send him to me.’
When the husband came home and found his wife had become so beautiful, he kissed her, and was beside himself for joy; and she could not imagine what had made him so different towards her. ‘Who has been here?’ he asked.
‘Only Padre Filippo,’ answered the wife; ‘and he said that if you asked I was to tell you to go to him;’ the husband ran off to him to thank him, and to say how sorry he was for having beaten her.