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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image behind iron doors and double locks, and the
Englishwoman went home with the treasure of
Aracoeli. She placed him in her palace on a
pedestal of marble and was more happy than she
had ever been before.
Up on Aracoeli, where no one knew what injury
they had suffered, they worshipped the false Christ
image as they had worshipped the true one, and
when Christmas came they built for him in the
church, as was the custom, a most beautiful niche.
There he lay, shining like a jewel, on Maria’s
knees, and about him shepherds and angels and wise
men were arranged. And as long as he lay there
children came from Rome, and the Campagna, and
were lifted up on a little pulpit in the basilica of
Aracoeli, and they preached on the sweetness and
tenderness and nobleness and power of the little
Christchild.
But the Englishwoman lived in great terror that
some one would discover that she had stolen the
Christ image of Aracoeli. Therefore she confessed
to no one that the image she had was the real one.
“It is a copy,” she said; “it is as like the real one
as it can be, but it is only copied.”
Now it happened that she had a little Italian
servant girl. One day when the latter went through
the room she stopped before the image and spoke
to him. “You poor Christchild, who are no
Christchild,” she said, “if you only knew how the real
child lies in his glory in the niche in Aracoeli and
how Maria and San Guiseppe and the shepherds are
kneeling before him! And if you knew how the
children place themselves on a little pulpit just in
front of him, and how they courtesy, and kiss their
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