"For half an hour I stood before it--worshipping it, really. The longer I looked the more I wanted something to take away with me that would keep it alive in my memory. I drew a little, of course, and had my sketch-book filled, student-like, with bits of architecture, peasants, horses, and things I came across every day; but I knew I could never reproduce the angelic smile on the Madonna's face, and that was the one thing that made it greater than all the bas-reliefs I had seen in all my wanderings. Then it suddenly occurred to me--there being no photographs in those days: none you could buy of a thing like this--that perhaps I could get some one in the village to make a caste, the Italians being experts at this work. While I was leaning over the rose-marble rail drinking it in, a door opened somewhere behind the altar and an old priest came slowly toward me. "'It is very lovely, holy father,' I said, in an effort to open up a conversation which might lead somewhere. "'Yes!' he replied curtly; 'but love it on your knees.' "So down I got, and there I stayed until he had finished his prayer at one of the side chapels and had left the church by the main door. "All this time I was measuring it with my eye--its width, thickness, the depth of the cutting, how much plaster it would take, how large a bag it would require in which to carry it away. This done I went back to Ravenna and started to look up some one of the image vendors who haunt the door of the great church. "But none of them would listen. It would take at least an hour before the plaster would be dry enough to come away from the marble. The priests--poor as some of them were--would never consent to such a sacrilege. Without their permission detection was almost certain; so please go to the devil, illustrious signore, and do not tempt a poor man who does not wish to go to prison for twenty lira. "This talk, let me tell you, took place in a shop up a back street, kept by a young Italian image-vendor who made casts and moulds with the assistance of his father, who was a hunch-back, and an old man all rags whom I could see was listening to every word of the talk. "That same night, about the time the lamps began to be lighted, and I had started out in search of another mouldmaker, the old man in rags stepped out of the shadow of a wall and touched my arm. "'I know the place, signore, and I know the Madonna. I have everything here in this bucket--at night the church is closed, but there is a side door. I will take your twenty lira. Come with me.'