But when the service began inside, she could not remember a single prayer. A fear of not finding the poor man at the entrance to the church when vespers were done came over her, and the fear that she would have done nothing to alleviate his need when nighttime, during which poverty is more hopeless and distressing than during the day, was so near. She signaled to the one of her attendants who carried the purse and went back with her to the entry hall. It had emptied out. Yet the stranger was still standing there, leaning against a pillar, and he seemed to be listening to the hymn that came in a strangely distant manner from the church, as though from heaven. His face was almost entirely covered, as is sometimes the case with lepers, who only expose their ugly sores when someone is standing right in front of them and they are sure that compassion and disgust will speak equally in their favor. Beatrice hesitated. She had the small purse in her own hands and felt only a few small coins in it. But with quick resolve she stepped up to the beggar and said in an uncertain, somewhat musical voice and without raising her runaway eyes from her own hands, “Not to offend you, sir . . . It seems to me, if I recognize you rightly, that I’m in your debt. Your father, I think, made that fine banister in our house, from wrought iron, you know, the one that adorns our stairway. Once after that, we found, in the room that he sometimes used to work in, a purse. I think he must have lost it—surely.” But the hopeless lie on her lips drove the girl to her knees before the stranger. She forced the brocade purse into his hands, covered by his cloak, and stammered, “Forgive me.”

She had time to feel the beggar tremble. Then Beatrice fled with her shocked attendant back into the church. Through the momentarily open door, there burst the sound of voices cheering.

The story is over. The honorable Palla degli Albizzi kept to his rags. He gave away all he possessed and went barefoot through the countryside. Later he is supposed to have lived in the vicinity of Subiaco.

“Those were the days,” said the schoolteacher. “But what was the use of all that anyway? He was on his way to becoming a wastrel, and as a result of this episode, instead he became a tramp, an oddity. And today, without doubt, his name has been forgotten.”

“Not true,” I replied modestly. “His name is mentioned from time to time in the great litanies of the Catholic Church among those who intercede on behalf of sinners; for he became a saint.”