as soon as the search was over. At length, in a fit of impatience, the man hit upon a desperate project, which he did not doubt would succeed. He went softly to the seashore and, after waiting till the enemy was plainly to be felt between his shoulders, flung himself headlong into the water. But, alas! engrossed by the one thought of vengeance, he had not calculated his own peril. The waters drew him away from shore in spite of his struggles, and just as they were closing over him, with his last glimpse of earth, he saw the flea, which had hopped from him on to a passing plank, floating safely to shore again.”
“The moral is—” Mr. Vane was concluding, when his daughter interrupted him.
“I maintain that the man conquered!” she exclaimed. “That flea could never bite him again.”
This uncomfortable talk was carried on in the house, which naturally suggested it. But when they went out of doors, they left it behind them. The quaint, zigzag streets; the countless number of odd nooks in every direction; the narrow vistas here and there between close rows of houses, where a wedge of distant mountain, as blue as a lump of lapis-lazuli, seemed to be thrust between the very walls, or where the rough gray ribbon of the street became a ribbon of flowery green, silvering off into the horizon, with a city showing on it far away no larger than a daisy; the people in the streets, and all about, whose simple naturalness was more astonishing than the most unnatural behavior could have been—all these kept their eyes and minds alert.
In the midst of the town stands the church, the houses clustering about it like children about their mother’s knees. Some little children
were playing on the steps outside; inside, a group of women, with white handkerchiefs on their heads, were kneeling about a confessional, waiting their turns. One of them, who had confessed, came slowly away, and went toward the high altar, touching here and there with a small staff she carried, her eyes looking straight ahead.
The Signora stepped quickly forward to remove a chair from her path. “You are blind!” she whispered pitifully.
The old woman smiled, and turned toward the voice a face of serious sweetness, as she made the reply of St. Clara: “She is not blind who sees God!”
She reached the altar-railing, and knelt there to wait for the Mass. Where she knelt the one sunbeam that found its way into the church so early fell over her. Feeling its warmth like a gentle touch, she lifted her face to it and smiled again.
The children, weary of their play, came in and wandered about the church. One, finding its mother among the penitents, went to lean on her lap. She smoothed its pretty curls absently with one hand, while the other slipped bead after bead of her chaplet, her lips moving rapidly. Another, seeing the hand of the priest resting on the door of the confessional, just under the curtain, went to kiss it, standing on tiptoe, and straining up to reach the fingers with its baby mouth. A third, seeing some one near it kneel before the altar, made a liliputian genuflection, and went down on its knees in the middle of the church, a mere dot in that space, and remained there looking innocently about, uncomprehending but unquestioning. Another dreamed along the side of the church, looking at the familiar pictures,