340 ARIADNE FLORENTINA. 



disease, which is one of the vital honours of the picture. 

 Quite one of the chief strengths of St. Elizabeth, in the Roman 

 Catholic view, was in the courage of her dealing with disease, 

 chiefly leprosy. Now observe, I say Roman Catholic view, 

 very earnestly just now ; I am not at all sure that it is so in a 

 Catholic view that is to say, in an eternally Christian and 

 Divine view. And this doubt, very nearly now a certainty, 

 only came clearly into my mind the other day after many and 

 many a year's meditation on it. I had read with great rever- 

 ence all the beautiful stories about Christ's appearing as a 

 leper, and the like ; and had often pitied and rebuked myself 

 alternately for my intense dislike and horror of disease. I 

 am writing at this moment within fifty yards of the grave of 

 St. Francis, and the story of the likeness of his feelings to 

 mine had a little comforted me, and the tradition of his con- 

 quest of them again humiliated me ; and I was thinking very 

 gravely of this, and of the parallel instance of Bishop Hugo of 

 Lincoln, always desiring to do service to the dead, as opposed 

 to my ow r n unmitigated and Louis-Quinze-like horror of fu- 

 nerals ; when by chance, in the cathedral of Palermo, a new 

 light was thrown for me on the whole matter. 



165. I was drawing the tomb of Frederick II., which is 

 shut off by a grating from the body of the church ; and I had, 

 in general, quite an unusual degree of quiet and comfort at 

 my work. But sometimes it was paralyzed by the uncon- 

 scious interference of one of the men employed in some minor 

 domestic services about the church. When he had nothing 

 to do, he used to come and seat himself near my grating, not 

 to look at my work, (the poor wretch had no eyes, to speak 

 of,) nor in any way meaning to be troublesome ; but there 

 was his habitual seat. His nose had been carried off by the 

 most loathsome of diseases ; there were two vivid circles of 

 scarlet round his eyes ; and as he sat, he announced his pres- 

 ence every quarter of a minute (if otherwise I could have for- 

 gotten it) by a peculiarly disgusting, loud, and long expectora- 

 tion. On the second or third day, just as I had forced myself 

 into some forgetfulness of him, and was hard at my work, I 

 was startled from it again by the bursting out of a loud and 



