‘“Ha! that will be the faithful dog of the murdered man,” said the police. “We shan’t be long before we find the body of the man himself!”
‘The wife was distracted at finding her husband, who had but so lately come back to her, was to be taken away again; and he could discern how real was her distress.
‘“Go to Padre Filippo, and he will set all right,” said the husband as they carried him away. The woman went to Padre Filippo, and he explained all, amid the laughter of the Court. But the husband went back to his wife, and never left her any more after that.’
[The story was told me another time with this variation, that the penitent was a peasant[7] who came up to Rome with his ass, and tied it to a pillar set up for the purpose outside the church, while he went in to confess. The first time he went, St. Philip told him he must have nothing more to do with the occasion of sin, who in this case was a spinner instead of a miniature-painter. The peasant was so angry with the advice that he stayed away from confession a whole year. At the end of the year he came back. St. Philip received him with open arms, saying he had been praying ever since for his return to a better mind. The sum that formed the sliding-scale that was to open his eyes to the mercenary nature of the affection he had so much prized, was calculated at a lower rate than the other; but the rest of the story was the same.]
8
‘Ah, there’s plenty to be said about Padre Filippo,’ said the charwoman; and I should have liked to put her under examination, but that it would have been a breach of hospitality, as the other evidently did not like the interruption; so I was obliged to be satisfied with the testimony she had already afforded of the popularity of the saint. ‘Ha, good Padre Filippo, he was content to eat “black bread” like us’; and she took a hunch out of her pocket to show me; (it was only like our ‘brown bread.’)
‘There was no lack where he was. Once I know, with half a rubbio[8] of corn, he made enough to last all the community ten years,’ she, however, ran on to say before she could be dismissed.