Indifferent alike to the orgies of my companions or to their reproaches
of me for not sharing them, I spent a solitary, wakeful night in great
exaltation of mind; with the first ray of dawn I was out and about,
gaining in entire loneliness my first view of the sacred city. I stood,
awestruck and breathless, under the star-strewn roof of the great
church; I knelt where Aurelia's knees must have kissed the storied
pavement. I walked in the vast Campo, which has been called, and justly
called, the finest piazza in Europe; wondered over the towered palace of
the ancient Commune; prayed at the altar of St. Catherine. Prepared then
by prayer and meditation, I made solemn and punctilious visits to what I
must call the holy places of Aurelia's nation: the Madonna del Bordone,
the Madonna delle Grazie, and the Madonna called of Provenzano. Before
each of these ladies--mournful, helpful, heaven-conversing deities--I
prayed devoutly, on my knees. I anointed the feet of each with my tears,
I offered up to each the incense of a sigh from my overcharged heart.
From the last and most gracious of the three ladies I received what
seems to have been a remarkable counsel.

I fell into conversation with the sacristan of her church--Santa Maria
di Provenzano is its name--who told me the tale of this wonder-working
image, a mutilated bust of the Holy Virgin, veiled and crowned. He said
that his Madonna was kind to all the unfortunate world, and famous all
over it, but that to the most unfortunate of all she was mother and
friend. "And whom do you call the most unfortunate of all?" I asked him.

He looked at me as he uttered these curious words. "The most unfortunate
of all, sir," he said, "are they that have to pretend to love when they
do not feel it. And theirs is the class of which our Madonna is the
patroness."