the obelisk would have thundered to the ground; but a brave sailor man, casting self-preservation to the winds, shouted, “Water on the ropes.” Instantly he was obeyed; a thousand hands sent the buckets flying along, the cables were drenched, and they held till the giant rose obediently in air and settled squarely on its base. The grateful Pope sent for the brave sailor and asked his name and birthplace. “Bresca of Bordighera,” was the answer. What he gave to Bresca, the chronicler has left to our imagination—probably enough to keep him in fat comfort to the end of his days; but to Bordighera, that garden of the Mediterranean shore, he gave the privilege of furnishing forever the palms used in the Church on Palm Sunday; and down to 1870 there came, every year, a ship to the mouth of the Tiber, full to the gunwale with the Bordighera palm branches, which the nuns of Sant’ Antonio wove and plaited into a thousand fanciful shapes, for use in the Palm Sunday procession at St. Peter’s. There is a touching story connected with the Piazza of St. Peter’s. Twenty years or so before Sixtus V became Pope, the sainted Pius V was reigning Pontiff (1566-1572). He had a great devotion to the blessed martyrs—I remember possessing a little terra-cotta lamp ornamented with Christian emblems, found in the Catacombs, which he had taken in his hands and blessed for some pious soul. He often had to traverse the great Piazza in going and coming from the Vatican, and he never did so without thinking of all the brave Christian blood that had been shed there in the early times. One day he was walking across the Piazza deep in conversation with the Ambassador of the King of Poland, when suddenly he paused, remembering the soil on which they stood. The place was unpaved then, and the Pope, stooping down, took up a handful of earth which he gave to the Ambassador, saying: “Keep this dust, for it is composed of the ashes of the saints and steeped in the blood of the martyrs.” The Ambassador, as we gather, received the gift more with respect for the hand that offered it than for its own sake. He spread out his handkerchief, the Pope shed on it the handful of dust, and the courtly Pole rolled it up and put it in his pocket. When he returned to his palace, he drew the packet out, doubtless wondering what he should do with the rather inconvenient contents. To his awe, the cambric was wet with blood. He spread it out—the earth had vanished and not a grain remained, but the handkerchief was steeped in the brave blood that had been shed for Christ under Nero and that, as one writer says, “had sprung forth again to attest, in the face of heresy and schism, that the faith of the Church under Pius was the same as the faith of the Church under Peter.”