The subject was unworthy of the
painter, and the result is what might have been expected,--a picture of
trivial and mundane beauty, without the least suggestion of
spirituality.
But there can be no doubt of the serious, solemn earnestness with which
the worthy Castilians from that day to this believe the romance. They
came up in groups and families, touching their fingers to the sacred
slab and kissing them reverentially with muttered prayers. A father
would take the first kiss himself, and pass his consecrated finger
around among his awe-struck babes, who were too brief to reach to the
grating. Even the aged verger who showed us the shrine, who was so frail
and so old that we thought he might be a ghost escaped from some of the
mediaeval tombs in the neighborhood, never passed that pretty
white-and-gold chapel without sticking in his thumb and pulling out a
blessing.
A few feet from this worship-worn stone, a circle drawn on one of the
marble flags marks the spot where Santa Leocadia also appeared to this
same favored Ildefonso and made her compliments on his pamphlet. Was
ever author so happy in his subject and his gentle readers? The good
bishop evidently thought the story of this second apparition might be
considered rather a heavy draught on the credulity of his flock, so he
whipped out a convenient knife and cut off a piece of her saint-ship's
veil, which clinched the narrative and struck doubters dumb.
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