Art and Science 



should have been allowed to sit on St. Anne's 

 right hand, laying down the law with a 

 " Marry, come up here," and a " Marry, go 

 down there," and a couple of such unabashed 

 collars as the old lady has put on for the 

 occasion ? 



Moreover (for I may as well demolish this 

 mischievous confusion between St. Joachim 

 and his mother-in-law once and for all), the 

 merest tyro in hagiology knows that St. 

 Joachim was not at home when the Virgin 

 was born. He had been hustled out of the 

 temple for having no children, and had fled 

 desolate and dismayed into the wilderness. 

 It shows how silly people are, for all the time 

 he was going, if they had only waited a little, 

 to be the father of the most remarkable person 

 of purely human origin who had ever been 

 born, and such a parent as this should surely 

 not be hurried. The story is told in the 

 frescoes of the chapel of Loreto, only a 

 quarter of an hour's walk from Varallo, and 

 no one can have known it better than 

 D'Enrico. The frescoes are explained by 

 written passages that tell us how, when 



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