The boy had been killed, the father only badly hurt.
His heart token was the last--a little common thing--and tied with no
rejoiceful ribbon but with a scrap of crape. I hoped Heaven would see
the crape as well as the tribute. When we went away he was still
kneeling in his patched blue cotton clothes, and as the saint had very
beautiful kind eyes, and all the tinsel flowers were standing in the
glowing light of stained glass, and the voice of the Church had begun to
speak too, through the organ, I daresay he went away comforted.
Momma says there is only one thing she recollects clearly about San
Lorenzo, and that is the Chapel of St. John the Baptist. This does not
remain in her memory because of the _Cinquecento_ screen or the
altar-canopy's porphyry pillars which we know we must have seen because
the guide-book says they are there, but because of the fact that Pope
Innocent the Eighth had it closed to our sex for a long time, except on
one day of the year, on account of Herodias. Momma considered this
extremely invidious of Innocent the Eighth, and said it was a thing no
man except a Pope would have thought of doing.
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