Note: Translator Pauline Bancroft Flach died in 1966, less than 70 years ago. Therefore, this work is protected by copyright, restricting your legal rights to reproduce it. However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now. Read more about copyright.
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pulled the bell-rope; it was his little, gold-shod foot
that had been stretched out to kick the door.
The gate-keeper instantly took the holy child up
in his arms. Then he saw that it had tears in its
eyes. Alas, the poor, holy child had wandered
through the town by night! What had it not seen?
So much poverty and so much want; so much
wickedness and so many crimes! It was terrible to think
what it must have experienced.
The gate-keeper went immediately to the prior
and showed him the image. And they wondered
how it had come out into the night.
Then the prior had the church bells rung to call
the monks to the service. And all the monks of
Aracoeli marched into the great, dim basilica in
order to place the image, with all solemnity, back
in its shrine.
Worn and suffering, they walked and trembled in
their heavy homespun robes. Several of them were
weeping, as if they had escaped from some terrible
danger. “What would have happened to us,” they
said, “if our only consolation had been taken from
us? Is it not Antichrist who has tempted out
Rome’s holy child from the sheltering sanctuary?”
But when they came to set the Christ image in
the shrine of the chapel, they found there the false
child; him who wore the inscription on his crown:
“My kingdom is only of this world.”
And when they examined the image more closely
they found the inscription.
Then the prior turned to the monks and spoke to
them: —
“Brothers, we will sing the ‘Te Deum,’ and
cover the pillars of the church with silk, and light
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