These fables I had believed in, for a time, as true. Blind, like the rest, because born in the land of darkness, I also, at one time, used to go and pray to the image _della Quercia_ (of the oak). One miracle, however, is certain, and that, too, the work of no other than this so-called "Madonna," (a horrible figure of a woman with a child in her arms,) namely, the enormous riches which rained down upon the _Frati_ for more than three centuries in consequence of it. The monastery is very large, with a magnificent church, in the _Bramante_ style, and surrounded by houses inhabited by the servants and husbandmen, with their families, who cultivate the immense extent of land belonging to the fraternity, which brings in every year a considerable revenue. There is a book upon these pretended miracles of the "_Madonna della Quercia_," printed more than a hundred years ago, which relates them with the utmost minuteness of detail. This book is sold to the devotees who are continually going to the monastery in order to pour their money into the treasury; and after I began to disbelieve the influence of its vaunted Madonna, I named it the Book of Industry. It is written in the worst possible style, and is full of grammatical errors. "Why do you not correct it?" said Father Pastori, who was at that time the Superior of the monastery; "why do you not revise it, and render it more readable? If you were to arrange the stories in proper order, and dress them up in flowery language, it would be perused with pleasure, and would tend to increase the number of devout worshippers of our Madonna." "Believe me, I should like very much to correct it as it ought to be; but I am afraid, in this case, it would be much less readable than at present." "How so?" "Because out of three hundred pages there would not remain one." Upon this the old fellow began to grow angry. I will not here repeat how many threats he thundered out against me for daring, as he said, the displeasure of the _Madonna della Quercia_. Little evil, however, has as yet befallen me, that I can trace to this cause. One day this same old man, who, to say the truth, after all had really a partiality for me, was holding a conversation with me and some others, among whom was Cardinal Velzi, who, as well as myself, belonged to that monastery, at least, to that section or family, though neither of us resided there.