to teach herself to accept pride in the place of the lowlier, happier, daily love she must learn to do without. Her face grew colder and more composed; Don Ambrogio gave her a nod of approval.

"It is Pierino!" the bare-legged Beppo proclaimed, pushing his way between dignitaries and elegant nobles and taking a position, in wide-eyed astonishment, in front of the pulpit, where he could watch every movement of his quondam school-fellow, whose words carried no meaning to his unlearned ears. But his heart throbbed with sudden loyalty in seeing his comrade the centre of such a festa; Beppo would stay and help him to get fair play, if he should need it, since it was well known that Pierino could not fight, for all his Latin!

But the little fellow in robe and cowl had neither eyes nor thoughts for his vast audience when he once gathered courage to begin—no memory for the pride of his teachers, no perception of his mother's yearning; shrinking and timid as he was, the first voicing of his own thought, in his childish treble voice, put him in presence of a problem and banished all other consciousness. It was merely a question to be met and answered, and his wonderful reasoning faculty stilled every other emotion. His voice grew positive as his thought asserted itself; his learning was a mystery, but argument after argument was met and conquered with the quoted wisdom of unanswerable names.

One after another the great men left the choir and came down into the area before the pulpits, that they might lose nothing.

One after another the Frari chose out champions to confute the child-philosopher, but he was armed on every side; and the childish face, the boyish manner and voice lent a wonderful charm to the words he uttered, which were not eloquent, but absolutely dispassionate and reasonable, and the fewest by which he might prove his claim.

Again and again his audience forgot themselves in murmurs of applause, rising beyond decorum, and once into a storm of approbation; then his timidity returned, he became self-conscious, fumbling with the white cowl that hung partly over his face, forgetting that it was not a hat, and gravely taking it off in salute.

The next day it was proclaimed on the Piazza, as a bit of news for the people of Venice—for which, indeed, those who had not witnessed the contest in the church of the Frari cared little and understood nothing—that "in the Philosophical Contest which had taken place between the Friars of the Frari and the Friars of the Servi, the victory had been won by Fra Paolo Sarpi, of the Servi, who had honorably triumphed through his vast understanding of the wisdom of the Fathers of the Church."

This was also published in the black frame beside the great door of the Frari and posted upon the entrance to the church of the Servi, while in the refectories of the respective convents it formed a theme of absorbing interest.

The Frari discussed the possibilities of childish mouthpieces for learned doctors, miraculously concealed—but low, for fear of scandal. The Servi said it out, for all to hear, "that it was a modern wonder of a Child in the Temple!"

But Fra Gianmaria hushed them, and was afraid; for often while he taught he came upon some new surprise, for he perceived that the boy's mind held some hidden spring of knowledge which was to him unfathomable.

"It is most wonderful," he said one evening to Fra Giulio, as they talked together in the cloister after vespers; "I solemnly declare that it hath happened to me to ask him a question of which I, verily, knew not the answer; and he, keeping in quiet thought for some moments, hath so lucidly responded that his words have carried with them the conviction that he had made a discovery which I knew not."

"It is some lesson which Don Ambrogio hath taught him."

"Not so—for Don Ambrogio hath little learning; but Paolo will cover us with honor. In learning he is never weary, yet hath he an understanding greater than mine own, and in docility he hath no equal. In his duty in the convent and in the church he is even more punctilious."

"Is it strange—or is it well," asked Fra Giulio with hesitation, "that in this year he hath spent with us he asks not for his mother, nor the little maid his sister, nor seemeth to grieve for them? For the boy is young."

"Nay," answered Fra Gianmaria, sternly; "it is no lack, but a grace that hath been granted him."

"Knowledge is a wonderful mystery," Fra Giulio answered; but softly to himself, as he crossed the cloister, he added, "but love is sweet, and the boy is very young."

The boy was kneeling placidly before the crucifix in his cell when Fra Giulio went to give him his nightly benediction; but the good friar's heart was troubled with tenderness because of a vision, that would not leave him, of a hungering mother's face.

II

Many years later one of the great artists of Venice, wandering about at sunset with an elusive vision of some wonderful picture stirring impatience within his soul, found a maiden sitting under the vine-covered pergola of the Traghetto San Maurizio, where she was waiting for her brother-in-law, who would presently touch at this ferry on his homeward way to Murano. A little child lay asleep in her arms, his blond head, which pitying Nature had kept beautiful, resting against her breast; the meagre body was hidden beneath the folds of her mantle, which, in the graceful fashion of those days, passed over her head and fell below the knees; her face, very beautiful and tender, was bent over the little sufferer, who had forgotten his pain in the weariness it had brought him as a boon.

The delicate purple bells of the vine upon the trellis stirred in the evening breeze, making a shimmer of perfume and color about her, like a suggestion of an aureole; and in the arbor, as in one of those homely shrines which everywhere make part of the Venetian life, she seemed aloof as some ideal of an earlier Christian age from the restless, voluble group upon the tiny quay.

There were facchini—those doers of nondescript smallest services, quarreling amiably to pass the time, springing forward for custom as the gondolas neared the steps; gransieri—the licensed traghetto beggars, ragged and picturesque, pushing past with their long, crooked poles, under pretence of drawing the gondolas to shore; one or two women from the islands, filling the moments with swift, declamatory speech until the gondola of Giambattista or of Jacopo should close the colloquy; an older peasant, tranquilly kneeling to the Madonna of the traghetto, amid the clatter, while steaming greasy odors from her housewifely basket of Venetian dainties mount slowly, like some travesty of incense, and cloud the humble shrine. Two or three comers swell the group from the recesses of the dark little shop behind, for no other reason than that life is pleasant where so much is going on; and some maiden, into whose life a dawning romance is just creeping, confesses it with a brighter color as she hangs, half-timidly, her bunch of tinselled flowers before the red lamp of the good little Madonna of this traghetto benedetto, whose gondoliers are the bravest in all Venice! Meanwhile the boatmen, coming, going, or waiting, keep up a lively chatter.

And under the trellis, as if far removed, the sleeping child and Marina of Murano bending over him a face glorified with its story of love and compassion, are like a living Rafaello!

"The bambino is beautiful," said the artist, drawing nearer, but speaking reverently, for he knew that he had found the face he had been seeking for his Madonna for the altar of the Servi. "What doth he like, your little one? For I am