“I have tried enough to find friends, Fra Felice.”
“Yes, men!” said the old man. “But how do men help? If any one is going fishing, Donna Micaela, he knows that he must call on San Pietro; if any one wishes to buy a horse, he can ask help of San Antonio Abbate. But if I want to pray for your railway, I do not know to whom I shall turn.”
Fra Felice meant that the trouble was that she had chosen no patron saint for her railway. He wished her to choose the crowned child that stood out in his old church as its first friend and promoter. He told her that if she only did that she would certainly be helped.
She was so touched that any one was willing to stand by her that she instantly promised to pray for her railway to the child at San Pasquale.
Fra Felice got a big collection-box and painted on it in bright, distinct letters: “Gifts for the Etna Railway,” and he hung it in his church beside the altar.
It was not more than a day after that that Don Antonio Greco’s wife, Donna Emilia, came out to the old, deserted church to consult San Pasquale, who is the wisest of all the saints.
During the autumn Don Antonio’s theatre had begun to fare ill, as was to be expected when no one had any money.
Don Antonio thought to run the theatre with less expense than before. He had cut off a couple of lamps and did not have such big and gorgeously painted play-bills.
But that had been great folly. It is not at the moment when people are losing their desire to go to the theatre that it will answer to shorten the princesses’ silk trains and economize on the gilding of the king’s crowns.