“To which the condemned replied: “‘E la testa di costì tu ’un la levrai’. “‘And thy head shall stick where it is for aye.’ “And so it came to pass that they could not get the head of the friar back through the hole, so there he died. And some say that after they got the body out they carried his likeness in stone and put it there in the little round window, in remembrance of the event, while others think that it is the friar himself turned to stone—_chi sa_?” * * * * * The conception of a stone head having been that of a person petrified for punishment is of the kind which would spring up anywhere, quite independently of tradition or borrowing; hence it is found the world over. That ideas of the kind may be common, yet not in common, nor yet uncommon, is shown by the resemblance of the remark of the friar: “Give him a drink and he never will die,”— which was as much as to say that inebriation would cause him to forget his execution—to a verse of a song in “Jack Sheppard”: “For nothing so calms, Our dolorous qualms, And nothing the transit to Tyburn beguiles, So well as a drink from the bowl of Saint Giles.” There is a merrier tale, however, of Santa Maria Maggiore, and one which is certainly far more likely to have occurred than this of the petrified _pater_. For it is told in the ancient _Facetiæ_ that a certain Florentine nobleman, who was a jolly and reckless cavalier, had a wife who, for all her beauty, was _bisbetica e cattiva_, capricious and spiteful, malicious and mischievous, a daughter of the devil, if there ever was one, who, like all those of her kind, was very devout, and went every day to confession in Santa Maria Maggiore, where she confessed not only her own sins, but also those of all her neighbours. And as she dwelt with vast eloquence on the great wickedness of her husband—having a tongue which would serve to sweep out an oven, or even a worse place {150}—the priest one day urged the husband to come to confession, thinking that it might lead to more harmony between the married couple. With which he complied; but when the priest asked him to tell what sins he had committed, the cavalier answered, “There is no need of it, Padre; you have heard them all from my wife many a time and oft, and with them a hundred times as many which I never dreamed of committing—including those of all Florence.”