Agnes abstractedly stooped and began plucking handfuls of lycopodium, which was growing green and feathery on one side of the marble frieze on which she was sitting; in so doing, a fragment of white marble, which had been overgrown in the luxuriant green, appeared to view. It was that frequent object in the Italian soil,--a portion of an old Roman tombstone. Agnes bent over, intent on the mystic "_Dis Manibus_" in old Roman letters. "Lord bless the child! I've seen thousands of them," said Jocunda; "it's some old heathen's grave, that's been in hell these hundred years." "In hell?" said Agnes, with a distressful accent. "Of course," said Jocunda. "Where should they be? Serves 'em right, too; they were a vile old set." "Oh, Jocunda, it's dreadful to think of, that they should have been in hell all this time." "And no nearer the end than when they began," said Jocunda. Agnes gave a shivering sigh, and, looking up into the golden sky that was pouring such floods of splendor through the orange-trees and jasmines, thought, How could it be that the world could possibly be going on so sweet and fair over such an abyss? "Oh, Jocunda!" she said, "it does seem _too_ dreadful to believe! How could they help being heathen,--being born so,--and never hearing of the true Church?" "Sure enough," said Jocunda, spinning away energetically, "but that's no business of mine; my business is to save _my_ soul, and that's what I came here for. The dear saints know I found it dull enough at first, for I'd been used to jaunting round with my old man and the boys; but what with marketing and preserving, and one thing and another, I get on better now, praise to Saint Agnes!" The large, dark eyes of Agnes were fixed abstractedly on the old woman as she spoke, slowly dilating, with a sad, mysterious expression, which sometimes came over them. "Ah! how can the saints themselves be happy?" she said. "One might be willing to wear sackcloth and sleep on the ground, one might suffer ever so many years and years, if only one might save some of them." "Well, it does seem hard," said Jocunda; "but what's the use of thinking of it? Old Father Anselmo told us in one of his sermons that the Lord wills that his saints should come to rejoice in the punishment of all heathens and heretics; and he told us about a great saint once, who took it into his head to be distressed because one of the old heathen whose books he was fond of reading had gone to hell,--and he fasted and prayed, and wouldn't take no for an answer, till he got him out." "He did, then?" said Agnes, clasping her hands in an ecstasy.