The Signora begged to call their attention to the _minestra_ that was steaming on the table. “Annunciata deserves that we should attend to it at once,” she said; “for she has given her best thoughts to it the whole afternoon. I couldn’t tell how many things have gone to its composition. I do hope it is good, so that we can consistently praise it. I should feel less disappointment in having a book fall dead from the press, than she will if we take no notice of her cooking. Don’t let the vacant chair injure your appetites; it is not for a ghost, but for Signor Leonardo, your Italian teacher. I told him to come to supper, and he is just five minutes too late――a wonder for him. He is the soul of promptness.” 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.