Presently Marion Vincent appeared, and with her Frobisher, and an unknown man with a magnificent brow, dark eyes of a remarkable vivacity, and a Southern eloquence both of speech and gesture. He proved to be a famous Italian, a poet well known to European fame, who, having married an English wife, had settled himself at Assisi for the study of St. Francis and the Franciscan literature. He became at once the centre of a circle which grouped itself on the terrace, while he pointed to spot after spot, dimly white on the shadows of the moon-lit plain, linking each with the Franciscan legend and the passion of Franciscan poetry. The slopes of San Damiano, the sites of Spello, Bevagna, Cannara; Rivo Torto, the hovering dome of the Portiuncula, the desolate uplands that lead to the Carceri; one after another, the scenes and images--grotesque or lovely--simple or profound--of the vast Franciscan story rose into life under his touch, till they generated in those listening the answer of the soul of to-day to the soul of the Poverello. Poverty, misery, and crime--still they haunt the Umbrian villages and the Assisan streets; the shadows of them, as the north knows them, lay deep and terrible in Marion Vincent's eyes. But as the poet spoke the eternal protest and battle-cry of Humanity swelled up against them--overflowed, engulfed them. The hearts of some of his listeners burned within them. And finally he brought them back to the famous legend of the hidden church: deep, deep in the rock--below the two churches that we see to-day; where St. Francis waits--standing, with his arms raised to heaven, on fire with an eternal hope, an eternal ecstasy. "Waits for what?" said Ferrier, under his breath, forgetting his audience a moment. "The death of Catholicism?" Sir James Chide gave an uneasy cough. Ferrier, startled, looked round, threw his old friend a gesture of apology which Sir James mutely accepted. Then Sir James got up and strolled away, his hands in his pockets, toward the farther end of the terrace. The poet meanwhile, ignorant of this little incident, and assuming the sympathy of his audience, raised his eyebrows, smiling, as he repeated Ferrier's words: "The death of Catholicism! No, Signor!--its second birth." And with a Southern play of hand and feature--the nobility of brow and aspect turned now on this listener, now on that--he began to describe the revival of faith in Italy.