I was surprised to see the pigeons that wheeled away at my approach allow the monk to handle them, but they seemed unaware of his touch.
“Poverino!” he said to the one with the broken foot. “Thank God that He has given you wings!”
Brother Leo spoke to every child he met, and they all answered him as if there was a secret freemasonry between them; but the grown-up people he passed with troubled eyes.
“It seems strange to me,” he said at last, “not to speak to these brothers and sisters of ours, and yet I see all about me that they do not salute one another.”
“They are many, and they are all strangers,” I tried to explain.
“Yes, they are very many,” he said a little sadly. “I had not known that there were so many people in the world, and I thought that in a Christian country they would not be strangers.”
I took another gondola by the nearest bridge, and we rowed to the Frari. I hardly knew what effect that great church, with its famous Titian, would have upon him. A group of tourists surrounded the picture. I heard a young lady exclaiming:
Drawn by W. T. Benda Half-tone plate engraved by C. W. Chadwick
“HE STOOD QUITE STILL FOR A WHILE, AND THEN HIS EYES FELL ON A BEGGAR”