In the country-places the great stand-by is the Capuchin, who has a reputation for suggesting lucky numbers. When he comes collecting alms in village or city the poor man asks him for a likely _terno_. He is not supposed to suggest these numbers, but he and the people understand each other, and every word, every allusion, which falls from his lips is thereupon eagerly noted. If he mentions a recent assassination, you "play" number _72 morto assassinato_, then the numbers indicating the day or some special circumstance, "a quarrel," "the knife" with which it was done, "jealousy," "a man," or "a woman." The element of chance, the ineradicable belief in luck, makes a man sure to play if three numbers come unbidden into his head. No pious person dreams of the "numbers of the Madonna"--6, 8, and 15--without at once "playing" them. The Madonna evidently intends "to do something" for you; indeed "if the Madonna suggests numbers" it is a safe thing, you can put five francs on it. It is popularly said that 2, 3, 5, 6 are numbers which always come out, these and their combinations. Fifty-eight is the number indicating the Pope, and 52, _morta che parla_, is played by good simple women who have dreamt of their dead mother. The industrious working middle classes and even the better classes "play," though the latter play _sub rosa_. On Saturday the people collect round the little lottery offices--some of them have waited to pay their bills until they ascertained their luck. On the appearance of the fateful numbers there is a general talk, a general lamentation: "If I had only done so-and-so." "If I had only played _morto_ instead of _ferito_" ("dead" instead of only "wounded.") For the Roman the whole known world sacred or profane is absorbed in the business of the lottery. Thus one of the popular sonnets in the Roman dialect describes how the flight into Egypt came about. On the 27th of December the Patriarch Joseph is snoring in bed, dreaming of lottery numbers, when an angel appears to him and says: "See here, old man, what a fine _festa_ there is going to be over number 28" (the 28th of December commemorates the massacre of the Innocents). Thereupon S. Joseph wakes like one crazy, hires a young donkey, and takes the Madonna and her child off to Egypt.