Yet there are more saints than the noble Jacques ever dreamed of in his grim category, crowded as it is. Saint Patrick, if we may credit the Irish legend, had two birthdays; still, the number of saints, all duly canonised, is so great, that the year can scarcely spare them the sixth of a birth-day apiece. Only yesterday, the postman (he is a Parisian postman, and, in appearance, is something between a policeman and a field-marshal in disguise) brought me a deformed little card, on which was pasted an almanac with a whole calendar-full of saints, neatly tied up with cherry-coloured ribbon, accompanying the gift with the compliments of the season, and an ardent wish that the new year might prove bonne et belle to me; all of which meant that I should give him two francs, on pain of being denounced to the concierge as a curmudgeon, to the landlord as a penniless lodger, and to the police as a suspicious character. Musing over the little almanac, in the futile attempt to get two francs’ worth of information out of it, I found a whole army of saints, of whom I had never heard before, and noticed the absence of a great many who are duly set down in another calendar I possess. Would you believe that neither Saint Giles nor Saint Swithin was to be found in my postman’s hagiology--that no mention was made of Saint Waldeburga, or of the blessed Saint Wuthelstan; while on the other hand I found Saint Yon, Saint Fiacre, Saint Ovid, Saint Babylas, Saint Pepin, Saint Ponce, Saint Frisque, Saint Nestor, and Saint Pantaloon? What do we know of these saints in England? Where were Saint Willibald, Saint Winifred, Saint Edward the Confessor, and Saint Dunstan, the nose-tweaker? Nowhere! Yet they must all have their days, their eves, and feasts. Where, above all, was my little Saint Zita? If one of the best of Christian gentlemen--the kindly humourist, who wrote the Ingoldsby Legends--could tell us, without scandal to his cloth or creed, the wondrous stories of Saint Gengulphus and Saint Odille, Saint Anthony and Saint Nicholas, shall I be accused of irreverence, if, in my own way, I tell the legend of little Saint Zita? I must premise that the first discovery of the saintly tradition is due to M. Alphonse Karr, who has a villa at Genoa, the birth-place of the saint herself. I have no memory for dates, and have no printed information to go upon, so I am unable to state the exact year, or even century, in which Saint Zita flourished. But I know that it was in the dark ages, and that the Christian religion was young, and that it was considerably more than one thousand five hundred years ago.