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 Joachim was in the desert, an angel
came to him in the guise of a fair, civil young gentleman, and told
him the Virgin was to be born. Then, later on, the same young
gentleman appeared to him again, and bade him "in God's name be
comforted, and turn again to his content," for the Virgin had been
actually born. On which St. Joachim, who seems to have been of
opinion that marriage after all WAS rather a failure, said that, as
things were going on so nicely without him, he would stay in the
desert just a little longer, and offered up a lamb as a pretext to
gain time. Perhaps he guessed about his mother-in-law, or he may
have asked the angel. Of course, even in spite of such evidence as
this I may be mistaken about the Virgin's grandmother's sex, and the
sacristan may be right; but I can only say that if the lady sitting
by St.
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