"True, my good woman," I replied. "The morning being rainy, I was prevented from painting out-of-doors, but I have been very busy, nevertheless." "Indeed, Signor," she exclaimed, "what could have occupied you so much as to forget your dinner, if I may be permitted to ask?" I expected this question, knowing that my hostess inherited the vice of curiosity, in common with the rest of her sex, in a marked degree. "How was I occupied?" I repeated. "Why, how else than by searching to the bottom that confounded miracle you were so full of all yesterday and the day before." "Oh, Signor, how you talk!" exclaimed my hostess, horrified. "What! do you mean to say that the Blessed Virgin has not wrought among us the greatest miracle ever heard of in these parts?" "Well, if this is one of the greatest," I replied, "I should advise her to give up miracles for the future, for she is no hand at them." "How say you, Signor?" cried the landlady, shocked at my levity, and crossing herself again and again. "Oh, you Protestants believe in nothing! What! Is it not a great miracle to raise the dead?" "It would be, if it were true," I interrupted. "If it were true!" she repeated. "How should it not be true? Have you not heard that the arch-priest himself believes it, that all the village believes it, that the good Ricardo the sacristan was an eye-witness of the miracle?" "I must have better testimony than his in order to believe in the miraculous character of the story you related to me. However, I have since looked into the case myself and find it to be a gross piece of imposture." "_Imposture!_" cried the hostess. "Impossible! Who has been imposing--his reverence, perhaps?" "No," I said; "the arch-priest was only one of the dupes. His rascal of a sacristan was at the bottom of all the mischief. That scoundrel Peppe, too, was another prominent actor in the farce." "What do I hear?" exclaimed my landlady; "the pious Ricardo and the holy Peppe called 'rascal' and 'scoundrel.' You surely mistake their characters." "We are all liable to make mistakes sometimes," said I; "but I will hope, for their own sakes, that they are not as black as they appear." "You mystify me, Signor," she replied; "but I am sure you must be labouring under a gross mistake, for as a proof of Peppe's being a holy man, he has been doing nothing but miracles since he was raised from the dead." "What is that you say?" cried I, pricking up my ears. "Why, Signor, you must know that as soon as Peppe left the church on the morning of the miracle he was followed by a great crowd of the faithful." "Of the curious and the idle, you mean," I observed, interrupting her. "Well, proceed." "Who followed him to the door of his house," she continued; "and as divers of them were labouring under sore diseases, they besought him to touch them that they might be healed. Well, very many of them went away cured; others, he said, he was unable to cure on account of their want of faith."