Dr.Riccabocca abhorred priests; but though Parson Dale was emphatically a parson, he seemed at that moment so little of what Dr.Riccabocca understood by a priest that the Italian's heart smote him for his irreverent jest on the cloth.

Luckily at this moment there was a diversion to that untoward commencement of conversation in the appearance of no less a personage than the donkey himself--I mean the donkey who ate the apple..