Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE CARPENTER'S WIFE: A CAPRICCIO "Habent sua fata — feminae." Although the Pilgrims' Way is a shady arcade, yet the ascent from Vicenza was steep enough to be something of a penance that sultry spring evening, and I was weary of the unending pillars and the modern yet already fading New Testament frescoes between them. But I was interested to see which parish or family had paid for each successive section, and what new name for the Madonna would be left to inscribe upon it. For even the Litany of Loreto seemed exhausted, and still the epithets poured out — "Lumen Confessorum," " Consolatrix Viduarum" " Radix Jesse" " Stella Matutina" " Fons Lachrymarum" " Clypeus Oppressorum" — a very torrent of love and longing. At last as I neared the summit of the Way, a fresco flashed upon me the meaning of it all — an " Apparitio B.M.V. in Monte Berico, 1428," representing the Virgin in all her radiant beauty appearing to an old peasant- woman. So this it was that had raised this long religious road to the Church of Our Lady of the Mountain ! I remembered the inscription in S. Rocco, telling how 30,000 men had pilgrimed here in 1875 — spectaculum mirum visu. But where was the church that had been built over the spot of the Madonna's appearance? I looked up and sighed wearily. I was only half-way up, I saw, for the road turned sharply to the right, and a new set of names began, and a new set of frescoes — still cruder, for I caught sight of nails driven into the Cross through the writhingframe of the Christ. But even my curiosity in the cornucopia of epithets was worn out. The corner had a picturesque outlook, and on the hill-side a bench stood waiting. Vicenza stretched below me, I could see the Palladian palaces admired of Goethe, the Greek theatre, the Colonnades, the Palace of... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.