The door opened as she spoke, and Signor Leonardo stood bowing on the threshold—a dark, circumspect little man, who gave an impression of such stiffness and dryness that one almost expected to hear him crackle and snap in moving. He recovered from his low bow, however, without any accident, and, with some excess of ceremoniousness, got himself down to the table, where he sat on the very edge of his chair, looking so solemn and polite that Isabel, as she afterward declared, longed to get up and shake him. “He would have rattled all to pieces, if I had,” she said.
This wooden little body contained, however, a cultivated mind and a good heart, and he was one of the most faithful, modest, and patient of men.
He had been at the Vatican that morning, he said, in answer to the Signora’s questions, and had seen the Holy Father in good health and
spirits, laughing at the cardinals who were with him, all of whom carried canes. “‘I am older than any of you,’ he said, ‘and, see! I can walk without my cane. Oh! I am a young man yet.’”
“I saw Monsignor M——,” the professor added, “and he requested me to give you this,” presenting a little package.
The Signora opened it in smiling expectation, and held up a small half-roll of bread out of which a piece had been bitten. “See how we idolaters love the Pope!” she said to Mr. Vane. “I begged Monsignor to get me a piece of bread from his breakfast-table. Let me see what he has written about it,” reading a card that accompanied this singular gift.
“My dear Signora,” the prelate wrote, “behold your keepsake! I stood by while the Holy Father breakfasted, like a dog watching for a bone, and the moment I saw the one bite taken out of this bread I begged the rest for you. ‘What!’ said the Pope, ‘my children take the very bread from my mouth!’ and gave it to me, laughing pleasantly.”
“The dear father,” the Signora said, kissing her treasure, as she rose to put it away in safety.
This little incident led the talk to the Pope, and to many incidents illustrative of his goodness and the affection the people bore him.
“A few years ago, in the old time,” the Signora said, “the price of bread was raised in Rome, for some reason or other, or for no reason. Some days after the Holy Father passed by here on his way to his favorite church, and ours, Bianca. He was walking, and his carriage following. I can see him now, in his white robe, his hands behind his back, holding his hat,