“What a grand procession of saints walk for ever through the Roman days!” the Signora exclaimed. “It would be something dazzling to the mind, if one could live on a central height, and hear the bells announce the different _festas_ as they come, singly or in groups, and know who and what each saint is. For example, this evening we hear from the Aventine the rejoicing announcement that to-morrow is the _festa_ of St. Alexis in his church, and from another church is called out the name of St. Leo IV., and from another St. Marcellina, the sister of St. Ambrose, and twelve martyrs will be celebrated in another church. If we should go to-morrow to either of those, we should find them adorned, sprinkled with green out into the very street, High Mass or Vespers going on, and the relics exposed on the altars. To-morrow night other bells will ring in other saints and martyrs. The night after, from a church in Monte Citorio will come the call, _Ecco_ St. Vincent of Paul! and the secular missions and the Sisters of Charity will be doing their best in his honor, and there will be cardinals, and pontifical vespers, and a panegyric. Four or five churches will celebrate their special saints the next day, and the next will be St. Praxides, on the Esquiline here; and the day after we shall be invited to pay our respects to St. Mary Magdalen. And then on to St. James the Great, which will be a great day; and the day after comes St. Anna, the mother of the Blessed Virgin; and, a little later, St. Ignatius marches by. What it would be to set the world aside, sit aloft on some tower there, listen to the announcements rung out from belfry after belfry, meditate, and look with the eyes of faith on what comes! What faces of young maidens, delicate spouses of Christ, bent like clusters of living flowers to listen to the voices that praise them, turned again heavenward to ask for blessings on their clients! What queenly women incline their crowned heads, when the Sacrifice goes up in their name, to see who of those who offer it is worthy and sincere! What glorious men, strong and shining, gaze down into the battle-field where their triumph was won, to read in the upturned faces of the combatants how the fight goes, and who needs their aid! I sometimes think that the saints look only when they are called by name, but that the Blessed Mother looks always. It is the mother who goes after the child who forgets, and watches over it while it sleeps.” The flocks of sparrows that had fled at their approach, weary of waiting for them to go away, after peeping and reconnoitring the situation, began to come back and flutter in under the foliage again. For a few minutes the trees stirred all through with them, as if with a breeze; then the little heads were tucked under the tired wings, and they all went to sleep, and, perhaps, dreamed.