p699-012 CHAPTER I. THE OLD TOWN.

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The setting sunbeams slant over the antique gateway of
Sorrento, fusing into a golden bronze the brown freestone
vestments of old Saint Antonio, who with his heavy stone
mitre and upraised hands has for centuries kept watch thereupon.

A quiet time he has of it up there in the golden Italian
air, in petrified act of blessing, while orange lichens and green
mosses from year to year embroider quaint patterns on the
seams of his sacerdotal vestments, and small tassels of grass
volunteer to ornament the folds of his priestly drapery, and
golden showers of blossoms from some more hardy plant fall
from his ample sleeve-cuffs. Little birds perch and chitter
and wipe their beaks unconcernedly, now on the tip of his
nose and now on the point of his mitre, while the world
below goes on its way pretty much as it did when the good
saint was alive, and, in despair of the human brotherhood,
took to preaching to the birds and the fishes.

Whoever passed beneath this old arched gateway, thus
saint-guarded, in the year of our Lord's grace —, might
have seen under its shadow, sitting opposite to a stand of
golden oranges, the little Agnes.

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A very pretty picture was she, reader, — with such a face
as you sometimes see painted in those wayside shrines of
sunny Italy, where the lamp burns pale at evening, and gilly-flower
and cyclamen are renewed with every morning.

She might have been fifteen or thereabouts, but was so
small of stature that she seemed yet a child. Her black
hair was parted in a white unbroken seam down to the high
forehead, whose serious arch, like that of a cathedral-door,
spoke of thought and prayer. Beneath the shadows of this
brow lay brown, translucent eyes, into whose thoughtful
depths one might look as pilgrims gaze into the waters of
some saintly well, cool and pure down to the unblemished
sand at the bottom. The small lips had a gentle compression,
which indicated a repressed strength of feeling; while
the straight line of the nose, and the flexible, delicate nostril,
were perfect as in those sculptured fragments of the antique
which the soil of Italy so often gives forth to the day from
the sepulchres of the past. The habitual pose of the head
and face had the shy uplooking grace of a violet; and yet
there was a grave tranquillity of expression, which gave a
peculiar degree of character to the whole figure.

At the moment at which we have called your attention,
the fair head is bent, the long eyelashes lie softly down on
the pale, smooth cheek; for the Ave Maria bell is sounding
from the Cathedral of Sorrento, and the child is busy with
her beads.

By her side sits a woman of some threescore years, tall,
stately, and squarely formed, with ample breadth of back
and size of chest, like the robust dames of Sorrento. Her
strong Roman nose, the firm, determined outline of her
mouth, and a certain energy in every motion, speak the
woman of will and purpose. There is a degree of vigor in

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the decision with which she lays down her spindle and bows
her head, as a good Christian of those days would, at the
swinging of the evening bell.

But while the soul of the child in its morning freshness,
free from pressure or conscience of earthly care, rose like
an illuminated mist to heaven, the words the white-haired
woman repeated were twined with threads of worldly prudence, —
thoughts of how many oranges she had sold, with a
rough guess at the probable amount for the day, — and her
fingers wandered from her beads a moment to see if the
last coin had been swept from the stand into her capacious
pocket, and her eyes wandering after them suddenly made
her aware of the fact that a handsome cavalier was standing
in the gate, regarding her pretty grandchild with looks of
undisguised admiration.

“Let him look!” she said to herself, with a grim clasp on
her rosary; — “a fair face draws buyers, and our oranges
must be turned into money; but he who does more than
look has an affair with me; — so gaze away, my master, and
take it out in buying oranges! — Ave Maria! ora pro nobis,
nunc et,” etc., etc.

A few moments, and the wave of prayer which had flowed
down the quaint old shadowy street, bowing all heads as the
wind bowed the scarlet tassels of neighboring clover-fields,
was passed, and all the world resumed the work of earth
just where they left off when the bell began.

“Good even to you, pretty maiden!” said the cavalier,
approaching the stall of the orange-woman with the easy,
confident air of one secure of a ready welcome, and bending
down on the yet prayerful maiden the glances of a pair of
piercing hazel eyes that looked out on each side of his aquiline
nose with the keenness of a falcon's.

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“Good even to you, pretty one! We shall take you for a
saint, and worship you in right earnest, if you raise not those
eyelashes soon.”

“Sir! my lord!” said the girl, — a bright color flushing
into her smooth brown cheeks, and her large dreamy eyes
suddenly upraised with a flutter, as of a bird about to take
flight.

“Agnes, bethink yourself!” said the white-haired dame;—
“the gentleman asks the price of your oranges; — be
alive, child!”

“Ah, my lord,” said the young girl, “here are a dozen
fine ones.”

“Well, you shall give them me, pretty one,” said the
young man, throwing a gold piece down on the stand with a
careless ring.

“Here, Agnes, run to the stall of Raphael the poulterer
for change,” said the adroit dame, picking up the gold.

“Nay, good mother, by your leave,” said the unabashed
cavalier; “I make my change with youth and beauty thus!”
And with the word he stooped down and kissed the fair forehead
between the eyes.

“For shame, Sir!” said the elderly woman, raising her
distaff, — her great glittering eyes flashing beneath her
silver hair like tongues of lightning from a white cloud.
“Have a care! — this child is named for blessed Saint
Agnes, and is under her protection.”

“The saints must pray for us, when their beauty makes
us forget ourselves,” said the young cavalier, with a smile.
“Look me in the face, little one,” he added; — “say, wilt
thou pray for me?”

The maiden raised her large serious eyes, and surveyed
the haughty, handsome face with that look of sober

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inquiry which one sometimes sees in young children, and the
blush slowly faded from her cheek, as a cloud fades after
sunset.

“Yes, my lord,” she answered, with a grave simplicity, —
“I will pray for you.”

“And hang this upon the shrine of Saint Agnes for my
sake,” he added, drawing from his finger a diamond ring,
which he dropped into her hand; and before mother or
daughter could add another word or recover from their surprise,
he had thrown the corner of his mantle over his
shoulder and was off down the narrow street, humming the
refrain of a gay song.

“You have struck a pretty dove with that bolt,” said another
cavalier, who appeared to have been observing the
proceeding, and now, stepping forward, joined him.

“Like enough,” said the first, carelessly.

“The old woman keeps her mewed up like a singing-bird,”
said the second; “and if a fellow wants speech
of her, it's as much as his crown is worth; for Dame
Elsie has a strong arm, and her distaff is known to be
heavy.”

“Upon my word,” said the first cavalier, stopping and
throwing a glance backward, — “where do they keep
her?”

“Oh, in a sort of pigeon's nest up above the Gorge;
but one never sees her, except under the fire of her grand-mother's
eyes. The little one is brought up for a saint, they
say, and goes nowhere but to mass, confession, and the
sacrament.”

“Humph?” said the other, “she looks like some choice
old picture of Our Lady, — not a drop of human blood in
her. When I kissed her forehead, she looked into my face

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as grave and innocent as a babe. One is tempted to try
what one can do in such a case.”

“Beware the grandmother's distaff!” said the other,
laughing.

“I've seen old women before,” said the cavalier, as they
turned down the street and were lost to view.

Meanwhile the grandmother and grand-daughter were
roused from the mute astonishment in which they were gazing
after the young cavalier by a tittering behind them; and
a pair of bright eyes looked out upon them from beneath
a bundle of long, crimson-headed clover, whose rich
carmine tints were touched to brighter life by setting sunbeams.

There stood Giulietta, the head coquette of the Sorrento
girls, with her broad shoulders, full chest, and great black
eyes, rich and heavy as those of the silver-haired ox for
whose benefit she had been cutting clover. Her bronzed
cheek was smooth as that of any statue, and showed a color
like that of an open pomegranate; and the opulent, lazy
abundance of her ample form, with her leisurely movements,
spoke an easy and comfortable nature, — that is to say, when
Giulietta was pleased; for it is to be remarked that there
lurked certain sparkles deep down in her great eyes, which
might, on occasion, blaze out into sheet-lightning, like her
own beautiful skies, which, lovely as they are, can thunder
and sulk with terrible earnestness when the fit takes them.
At present, however, her face was running over with mischievous
merriment, as she slyly pinched little Agnes by
the ear.

“So you know not yon gay cavalier, little sister?”
she said, looking askance at her from under her long
lashes.

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“No, indeed! What has an honest girl to do with knowing
gay cavaliers?” said Dame Elsie, bestirring herself with
packing the remaining oranges into a basket, which she covered
trimly with a heavy linen towel of her own weaving.
“Girls never come to good who let their eyes go walking
through the earth, and have the names of all the wild gallants
on their tongues. Agnes knows no such nonsense, —
blessed be her gracious patroness, with Our Lady and Saint
Michael!”

“I hope there is no harm in knowing what is right before
one's eyes,” said Giulietta. “Anybody must be blind and
deaf not to know the Lord Adrian. All the girls in Sorrento
know him. They say he is even greater than he
appears, — that he is brother to the King himself; at any
rate, a handsomer and more gallant gentleman never wore
spurs.”

“Let him keep to his own kind,” said Elsie. “Eagles
make bad work in dove-cots. No good comes of such gallants
for us.”

“Nor any harm, that I ever heard of,” said Giulietta.
“But let me see, pretty one, — what did he give you? Holy
Mother! what a handsome ring!”

“It is to hang on the shrine of Saint Agnes,” said the
younger girl, looking up with simplicity.

A loud laugh was the first answer to this communication.
The scarlet clover-tops shook and quivered with the merriment.

“To hang on the shrine of Saint Agnes!” Giulietta repeated.
“That is a little too good!”

“Go, go, you baggage!” said Elsie, wrathfully brandishing
her spindle. “If ever you get a husband, I hope he'll
give you a good beating! You need it, I warrant! Always

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stopping on the bridge there, to have cracks with the young
men! Little enough you know of saints, I dare say! So
keep away from my child! — Come, Agnes,” she said, as she
lifted the orange-basket on to her head; and, straightening
her tall form, she seized the girl by the hand to lead her
away.

p699-020 CHAPTER II. THE DOVE-COT.

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The old town of Sorrento is situated on an elevated plateau,
which stretches into the sunny waters of the Mediterranean,
guarded on all sides by a barrier of mountains which
defend it from bleak winds and serve to it the purpose of
walls to a garden. Here, groves of oranges and lemons,
with their almost fabulous coincidence of fruitage with flowers,
fill the air with perfume, which blends with that of
roses and jessamines; and the fields are so starred and
enamelled with flowers that they might have served as the
type for those Elysian realms sung by ancient poets. The
fervid air is fanned by continual sea-breezes, which give a
delightful elasticity to the otherwise languid climate. Under
all these cherishing influences, the human being develops a
wealth and luxuriance of physical beauty unknown in less
favored regions. In the region about Sorrento one may be
said to have found the land where beauty is the rule and not
the exception. The singularity there is not to see handsome
points of physical proportion, but rather to see those who
are without them. Scarce a man, woman, or child you meet
who has not some personal advantage to be commended,
while even striking beauty is common. Also, under these
kindly skies, a native courtesy and gentleness of manner
make themselves felt. It would seem as if humanity, rocked
in this flowery cradle, and soothed by so many daily caresses
and appliances of nursing Nature, grew up with all that is
kindliest on the outward, — not repressed and beat in, as

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under the inclement atmosphere and stormy skies of the
North.

The town of Sorrento itself overhangs the sea, skirting
along rocky shores, which, hollowed here and there into
picturesque grottoes, and fledged with a wild plumage of
brilliant flowers and trailing vines, descend in steep precipices
to the water. Along the shelly beach, at the bottom,
one can wander to look out on the loveliest prospect in the
world. Vesuvius rises with its two peaks softly clouded in
blue and purple mists, which blend with its ascending vapors, —
Naples and the adjoining villages at its base gleaming
in the distance like a fringe of pearls on a regal mantle.
Nearer by, the picturesque rocky shores of the island of
Capri seem to pulsate through the dreamy, shifting mists
that veil its sides; and the sea shimmers and glitters like
the neck of a peacock with an iridescent mingling of colors:
the whole air is a glorifying medium, rich in prismatic hues
of enchantment.

The town on three sides is severed from the main land
by a gorge two hundred feet in depth and forty or fifty in
breadth, crossed by a bridge resting on double arches, the
construction of which dates back to the time of the ancient
Romans. This bridge affords a favorite lounging-place for
the inhabitants, and at evening a motley assemblage may be
seen lolling over its moss-grown sides, — men with their picturesque
knit caps of scarlet or brown falling gracefully on
one shoulder, and women with their shining black hair and
the enormous pearl ear-rings which are the pride and heirlooms
of every family. The present traveller at Sorrento
may remember standing on this bridge and looking down the
gloomy depths of the gorge, to where a fair villa, with its
groves of orange-trees and gardens, overhangs the tremendous
depths below.

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Hundreds of years since, where this villa now stands was
the simple dwelling of the two women whose history we have
begun to tell you. There you might have seen a small stone
cottage with a two-arched arcade in front, gleaming brilliantly
white out of the dusky foliage of an orange-orchard.
The dwelling was wedged like a bird-box between two
fragments of rock, and behind it the land rose rocky, high,
and steep, so as to form a natural wall. A small ledge or
terrace of cultivated land here hung in air, — below it, a
precipice of two hundred feet down into the Gorge of Sorrento.
A couple of dozen orange-trees, straight and tall,
with healthy, shining bark, here shot up from the fine black
volcanic soil, and made with their foliage a twilight shadow
on the ground, so deep that no vegetation, save a fine velvet
moss, could dispute their claim to its entire nutritious
offices. These trees were the sole wealth of the women and
the sole ornament of the garden; but, as they stood there,
not only laden with golden fruit, but fragrant with pearly
blossoms, they made the little rocky platform seem a perfect
Garden of the Hesperides. The stone cottage, as we have
said, had an open, whitewashed arcade in front, from which
one could look down into the gloomy depths of the gorge, as
into some mysterious underworld. Strange and weird it
seemed, with its fathomless shadows and its wild grottoes,
over which hung, silently waving, long pendants of ivy, while
dusky gray aloes uplifted their horned heads from great
rock-rifts, like elfin spirits struggling upward out of the
shade. Nor was wanting the usual gentle poetry of flowers;
for white iris leaned its fairy pavilion over the black void
like a pale-cheeked princess from the window of some dark
enchanted castle, and scarlet geranium and golden broom and
crimson gladiolus waved and glowed in the shifting beams of

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the sunlight. Also there was in this little spot what forms
the charm of Italian gardens always, — the sweet song and
prattle of waters. A clear mountain-spring burst through
the rock on one side of the little cottage, and fell with a
lulling noise into a quaint moss-grown water-trough, which
had been in former times the sarcophagus of some old
Roman sepulchre. Its sides were richly sculptured with
figures and leafy scrolls and arabesques, into which the slyfooted
lichens with quiet growth had so insinuated themselves
as in some places almost to obliterate the original
design; while, round the place where the water fell, a veil
of ferns and maiden's hair, studded with tremulous silver
drops, vibrated to its soothing murmur. The superfluous
waters, drained off by a little channel on one side, were
conducted through the rocky parapet of the garden, whence
they trickled and tinkled from rock to rock, falling with a
continual drip among the swaying ferns and pendent ivy-wreaths,
till they reached the little stream at the bottom
of the gorge. This parapet or garden-wall was formed of
blocks or fragments of what had once been white marble,
the probable remains of the ancient tomb from which the
sarcophagus was taken. Here and there a marble acanthus-leaf,
or the capital of an old column, or a fragment of sculpture
jutted from under the mosses, ferns, and grasses with
which prodigal Nature had filled every interstice and carpeted
the whole. These sculptured fragments everywhere
in Italy seem to whisper from the dust, of past life and death,
of a cycle of human existence forever gone, over whose tomb
the life of to-day is built.

“Sit down and rest, my dove,” said Dame Elsie to her
little charge, as they entered their little enclosure.

Here she saw for the first time, what she had not noticed

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in the heat and hurry of her ascent, that the girl was panting
and her gentle bosom rising and falling in thick heart-beats,
occasioned by the haste with which she had drawn
her onward.

“Sit down, dearie, and I will get you a bit of supper.”

“Yes, grandmother, I will. I must tell my beads once
for the soul of the handsome gentleman that kissed my forehead
to-night.”

“How did you know that he was handsome, child?” said
the old dame, with some sharpness in her voice.

“He bade me look on him, grandmother, and I saw it.”

“You must put such thoughts away, child,” said the old
dame.

“Why must I?” said the girl, looking up with an eye as
clear and unconscious as that of a three-year old child.

“If she does not think, why should I tell her?” said
Dame Elsie, as she turned to go into the house, and left the
child sitting on the mossy parapet that overlooked the gorge.
Thence she could see far off, not only down the dim, sombre
abyss, but out to the blue Mediterranean beyond, now calmly
lying in swathing-bands of purple, gold, and orange, while
the smoky cloud that overhung Vesuvius became silver and
rose in the evening light.

There is always something of elevation and purity that
seems to come over one from being in an elevated region.
One feels morally as well as physically above the world, and
from that clearer air able to look down on it calmly with
disengaged freedom. Our little maiden sat for a few moments
gazing, her large brown eyes dilating with a tremulous
lustre, as if tears were half of a mind to start in them,
and her lips apart with a delicate earnestness, like one who
is pursuing some pleasing inner thought. Suddenly rousing

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herself, she began by breaking the freshest orange-blossoms
from the golden-fruited trees, and, kissing and pressing them
to her bosom, she proceeded to remove the faded flowers of
the morning from before a little rude shrine in the rock,
where, in a sculptured niche, was a picture of the Madonna
and Child, with a locked glass door in front of it. The picture
was a happy transcript of one of the fairest creations
of the religious school of Florence, done by one of those
rustic copyists of whom Italy is full, who appear to possess
the instinct of painting, and to whom we owe many of those
sweet faces which sometimes look down on us by the wayside
from rudest and homeliest shrines.

The poor fellow by whom it had been painted was one to
whom years before Dame Elsie had given food and shelter
for many months during a lingering illness; and he had
painted so much of his dying heart and hopes into it that it
had a peculiar and vital vividness in its power of affecting
the feelings. Agnes had been familiar with this picture
from early infancy. No day of her life had the flowers
failed to be freshly placed before it. It had seemed to smile
down sympathy on her childish joys, and to cloud over with
her childish sorrows. It was less a picture to her than a
presence; and the whole air of the little orange-garden
seemed to be made sacred by it. When she had arranged
her flowers, she kneeled down and began to say prayers for
the soul of the young gallant.

“Holy Jesus,” she said, “he is young, rich, handsome, and
a king's brother; and for all these things the Fiend may
tempt him to forget his God and throw away his soul. Holy
Mother, give him good counsel!”

“Come, child, to your supper,” said Dame Elsie. “I
have milked the goats, and everything is ready.”

p699-026 CHAPTER III. THE GORGE.

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After her light supper was over, Agnes took her distaff,
wound with shining white flax, and went and seated herself
in her favorite place, on the low parapet that overlooked
the gorge.

This ravine, with its dizzy depths, its waving foliage, its
dripping springs, and the low murmur of the little stream
that pursued its way far down at the bottom, was one of
those things which stimulated her impressible imagination,
and filled her with a solemn and vague delight. The ancient
Italian tradition made it the home of fauns and dryads,
wild woodland creatures, intermediate links between
vegetable life and that of sentient and reasoning humanity.
The more earnest faith that came in with Christianity,
if it had its brighter lights in an immortality of
blessedness, had also its deeper shadows in the intenser
perceptions it awakened of sin and evil, and of the mortal
struggle by which the human spirit must avoid endless woe
and rise to endless felicity. The myths with which the
colored Italian air was filled in mediæval ages no longer
resembled those graceful, floating, cloud-like figures one
sees in the ancient chambers of Pompeii, — the bubbles
and rainbows of human fancy, rising aimless and buoyant,
with a mere freshness of animal life, against a black background
of utter and hopeless ignorance as to man's past
or future. They were rather expressed by solemn images

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of mournful, majestic angels and of triumphant saints, or
fearful, warning presentations of loathsome fiends. Each
lonesome gorge and sombre dell had tales no more of
tricky fauns and dryads, but of those restless, wandering
demons who, having lost their own immortality of blessedness,
constantly lie in wait to betray frail humanity, and
cheat it of that glorious inheritance bought by the Great
Redemption.

The education of Agnes had been one which rendered
her whole system peculiarly sensitive and impressible to
all influences from the invisible and unseen. Of this education
we shall speak more particularly hereafter. At
present we see her sitting in the twilight on the moss-grown
marble parapet, her distaff, with its silvery flax,
lying idly in her hands, and her widening dark eyes gazing
intently into the gloomy gorge below, from which arose
the far-off complaining babble of the brook at the bottom
and the shiver and sigh of evening winds through the
trailing ivy. The white mist was slowly rising, wavering,
undulating, and creeping its slow way up the sides of the
gorge. Now it hid a tuft of foliage, and now it wreathed
itself around a horned clump of aloes, and, streaming far
down below it in the dimness, made it seem like the goblin
robe of some strange, supernatural being.

The evening light had almost burned out in the sky:
only a band of vivid red lay low in the horizon out to sea,
and the round full moon was just rising like a great silver
lamp, while Vesuvius with its smoky top began in the obscurity
to show its faintly flickering fires. A vague agitation
seemed to oppress the child; for she sighed deeply, and
often repeated with fervor the Ave Maria.

At this moment there began to rise from the very depths

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of the gorge below her the sound of a rich tenor voice,
with a slow, sad modulation, and seeming to pulsate upward
through the filmy, shifting mists. It was one of those voices
which seem fit to be the outpouring of some spirit denied all
other gifts of expression, and rushing with passionate fervor
through this one gate of utterance. So distinctly were the
words spoken, that they seemed each one to rise as with a
separate intelligence out of the mist, and to knock at the
door of the heart.

There was such an intense earnestness in these sounds,
that large tears gathered in the wide dark eyes, and fell one
after another upon the sweet alyssum and maiden's-hair that
grew in the crevices of the marble wall. She shivered and
drew away from the parapet, and thought of stories she had
heard the nuns tell of wandering spirits who sometimes in
lonesome places pour forth such entrancing music as bewilders
the brain of the unwary listener, and leads him to
some fearful destruction.

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“Agnes!” said the sharp voice of old Elsie, appearing at
the door, — “here! where are you!”

“Here, grandmamma.”

“Who 's that singing this time o' night?”

“I don't know, grandmamma.”

Somehow the child felt as if that singing were strangely
sacred to her, — a rapport between her and something
vague and invisible which might yet become dear.

“Is 't down in the gorge?” said the old woman, coming
with her heavy, decided step to the parapet, and looking
over, her keen black eyes gleaming like dagger-blades into
the mist. “If there 's anybody there,” she said, “let them
go away, and not be troubling honest women with any of
their caterwauling. Come, Agnes,” she said, pulling the
girl by the sleeve, “you must be tired, my lamb! and your
evening-prayers are always so long, best be about them, girl,
so that old grandmamma may put you to bed. What ails
the girl? Been crying! Your hand is cold as a stone.”

“Grandmamma, what if that might be a spirit?” she
said. “Sister Rosa told me stories of singing spirits that
have been in this very gorge.”

“Likely enough,” said Dame Elsie; “but what 's that to
us? Let 'em sing! — so long as we don't listen, where 's
the harm done? We will sprinkle holy water all round
the parapet, and say the office of Saint Agnes, and let them
sing till they are hoarse.”

Such was the triumphant view which this energetic good
woman took of the power of the means of grace which her
church placed at her disposal.

Nevertheless, while Agnes was kneeling at her evening-prayers,
the old dame consoled herself with a soliloquy, as
with a brush she vigorously besprinkled the premises with
holy water.

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“Now, here 's the plague of a girl! If she 's handsome,—
and nobody wants one that is n't, — why, then, it 's a
purgatory to look after her. This one is good enough, —
none of your hussies, like Giulietta: but the better they
are, the more sure to have fellows after them. A murrain
on that cavalier, — king's brother, or what not! — it
was he serenading, I 'll be bound. I must tell Antonio, and
have the girl married, for aught I see: and I don't want to
give her to him either; he did n't bring her up. There 's
no peace for us mothers. Maybe I 'll tell Father Francesco
about it. That 's the way poor little Isella was carried
away. Singing is of the Devil, I believe; it always bewitches
girls. I 'd like to have poured some hot oil down
the rocks: I 'd have made him squeak in another tone, I
reckon. Well, well! I hope I shall come in for a good seat
in paradise for all the trouble I 've had with her mother, and
am like to have with her, — that 's all!”

In an hour more, the large, round, sober moon was shining
fixedly on the little mansion in the rocks, silvering the
glossy darkness of the orange-leaves, while the scent of the
blossoms arose like clouds about the cottage. The moonlight
streamed through the unglazed casement, and made a
square of light on the little bed where Agnes was sleeping,
in which square her delicate face was framed, with its tremulous
and spiritual expression most resembling in its sweet
plaintive purity some of the Madonna faces of Frà Angelico, —
those tender wild-flowers of Italian religion and
poetry.

By her side lay her grandmother, with those sharp, hard,
clearly cut features, so worn and bronzed by time, so lined
with labor and care, as to resemble one of the Fates in the
picture of Michel Angelo; and even in her sleep she held

[figure description] Page 026.[end figure description]

the delicate lily hand of the child in her own hard, brown
one, with a strong and determined clasp.

While they sleep, we must tell something more of the story
of the little Agnes, — of what she is, and what are the causes
which have made her such.

p699-032 CHAPTER IV. WHO AND WHAT.

[figure description] Page 027.[end figure description]

Old Elsie was not born a peasant. Originally she was
the wife of a steward in one of those great families of
Rome whose state and traditions were princely. Elsie, as
her figure and profile and all her words and movements
indicated, was of a strong, shrewd, ambitious, and courageous
character, and well disposed to turn to advantage every gift
with which Nature had endowed her.

Providence made her a present of a daughter whose
beauty was wonderful, even in a country where beauty is
no uncommon accident. In addition to her beauty, the little
Isella had quick intelligence, wit, grace, and spirit. As a
child she became the pet and plaything of the Princess
whom Elsie served. This noble lady, pressed by the ennui
which is always the moth and rust on the purple and gold
of rank and wealth, had, as other noble ladies had in those
days, and have now, sundry pets: greyhounds, white and
delicate, that looked as if they were made of Sèvres china;
spaniels with long silky ears and fringy paws; apes and
monkeys, that made at times sad devastations in her ward-robe;
and a most charming little dwarf, that was ugly
enough to frighten the very owls, and spiteful as he was
ugly. She had, moreover, peacocks, and macaws, and parrots,
and all sorts of singing-birds, and falcons of every
breed, and horses, and hounds, — in short, there is no saying
what she did not have. One day she took it into her

[figure description] Page 028.[end figure description]

head to add the little Isella to the number of her acquisitions.
With the easy grace of aristocracy, she reached out
her jewelled hand and took Elsie's one flower to add to
her conservatory, — and Elsie was only too proud to have
it so.

Her daughter was kept constantly about the person of the
Princess, and instructed in all the wisdom which would have
been allowed her, had she been the Princess's own daughter,
which, to speak the truth, was in those days nothing very
profound, — consisting of a little singing and instrumentation,
a little embroidery and dancing, with the power of
writing her own name and of reading a love-letter.

All the world knows that the very idea of a pet is something
to be spoiled for the amusement of the pet-owner; and
Isella was spoiled in the most particular and circumstantial
manner. She had suits of apparel for every day in the year,
and jewels without end, — for the Princess was never weary
of trying the effect of her beauty in this and that costume;
so that she sported through the great grand halls and down
the long aisles of the garden much like a bright-winged
humming-bird, or a damsel-fly all green and gold. She was
a genuine child of Italy, — full of feeling, spirit, and genius,—
alive in every nerve to the finger-tips; and under the
tropical sunshine of her mistress's favor she grew as an
Italian rose-bush does, throwing its branches freakishly over
everything in a wild labyrinth of perfume, brightness, and
thorns.

For a while her life was a triumph, and her mother triumphed
with her at an humble distance. The Princess was
devoted to her with the blind fatuity with which ladies of
rank at times will invest themselves in a caprice. She arrogated
to herself all the praises of her beauty and wit,

[figure description] Page 029.[end figure description]

allowed her to flirt and make conquests to her heart's content,
and engaged to marry her to some handsome young officer
of her train, when she had done being amused with her.

Now we must not wonder that a young head of fifteen
should have been turned by this giddy elevation, nor that
an old head of fifty should have thought all things were possible
in the fortune of such a favorite. Nor must we wonder
that the young coquette, rich in the laurels of a hundred
conquests, should have turned her bright eyes on the son
and heir, when he came home from the University of Bologna.
Nor is it to be wondered at that this same son and
heir, being a man as well as a Prince, should have done as
other men did, — fallen desperately in love with this dazzling,
sparkling, piquant mixture of matter and spirit, which no
university can prepare a young man to comprehend, — which
always seemed to run from him, and yet always threw a
Parthian shot behind her as she fled. Nor is it to be wondered
at, if this same prince, after a week or two, did not
know whether he was on his head or his heels, or whether
the sun rose in the east or the south, or where he stood, or
whither he was going.

In fact, the youthful pair very soon came into that dream-land
where are no more any points of the compass, no more
division of time, no more latitude and longitude, no more up
and down, but only a general wandering among enchanted
groves and singing nightingales.

It was entirely owing to old Elsie's watchful shrewdness
and address that the lovers came into this paradise by the
gate of marriage; for the young man was ready to offer
anything at the feet of his divinity, as the old mother was
not slow to perceive.

So they stood at the altar for the time being a pair of as

[figure description] Page 030.[end figure description]

true lovers as Romeo and Juliet: but then, what has true
love to do with the son of a hundred generations and heir to
a Roman principality?

Of course, the rose of love, having gone through all its
stages of bud and blossom into full flower, must next begin
to drop its leaves. Of course. Who ever heard of an immortal
rose?

The time of discovery came. Isella was found to be a
mother; and then the storm burst upon her and drabbled
her in the dust as fearlessly as the summer-wind sweeps
down and besmirches the lily it has all summer been wooing
and flattering.

The Princess was a very pious and moral lady, and of
course threw her favorite out into the street as a vile weed,
and virtuously ground her down under her jewelled high-heeled
shoes.

She could have forgiven her any common frailty; — of
course it was natural that the girl should have been seduced
by the all-conquering charms of her son; — but aspire to
marriage with their house! — pretend to be her son's wife!
Since the time of Judas had such treachery ever been heard
of?

Something was said of the propriety of walling up the
culprit alive, — a mode of disposing of small family-matters
somewhat à la mode in those times. But the Princess acknowledged
herself foolishly tender, and unable quite to
allow this very obvious propriety in the case.

She contented herself with turning mother and daughter
into the streets with every mark of ignominy, which was
reduplicated by every one of her servants, lackeys, and court-companions,
who, of course, had always known just how the
thing must end.

[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]

As to the young Prince he acted as a well-instructed
young nobleman should, who understands the great difference
there is between the tears of a duchess and those of
low-born women. No sooner did he behold his conduct in
the light of his mother's countenance than he turned his
back on his low marriage with edifying penitence. He did
not think it necessary to convince his mother of the real
existence of a union whose very supposition made her so
unhappy, and occasioned such an uncommonly disagreeable
and tempestuous state of things in the well-bred circle where
his birth called him to move. Being, however, a religious
youth, he opened his mind to his family-confessor, by whose
advice he sent a messenger with a large sum of money to
Elsie, piously commending her and her daughter to the
Divine protection. He also gave orders for an entire new
suit of raiment for the Virgin Mary in the family-chapel,
including a splendid set of diamonds, and promised unlimited
candles to the altar of a neighboring convent. If all this
could not atone for a youthful error, it was a pity. So he
thought, as he drew on his riding-gloves and went off on
a hunting-party, like a gallant and religious young nobleman.

Elsie, meanwhile, with her forlorn and disgraced daughter,
found a temporary asylum in a neighboring mountain-village,
where the poor, bedrabbled, broken-winged song-bird soon
panted and fluttered her little life away.

When the once beautiful and gay Isella had been hidden
in the grave, cold and lonely, there remained a little wailing
infant, which Elsie gathered to her bosom.

Grim, dauntless, and resolute, she resolved, for the sake
of this hapless one, to look life in the face once more, and
try the battle under other skies.

[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]

Taking the infant in her arms, she travelled with her far
from the scene of her birth, and set all her energies at work
to make for her a better destiny than that which had fallen
to the lot of her unfortunate mother.

She set about to create her nature and order her fortunes
with that sort of downright energy with which resolute people
always attack the problem of a new human existence.
This child should be happy; the rocks on which her mother
was wrecked she should never strike upon, — they were all
marked on Elsie's chart. Love had been the root of all
poor Isella's troubles, — and Agnes never should know love,
till taught it safely by a husband of Elsie's own choosing.

The first step of security was in naming her for the chaste
Saint Agnes, and placing her girlhood under her special protection.
Secondly, which was quite as much to the point, she
brought her up laboriously in habits of incessant industry,—
never suffering her to be out of her sight, or to have any
connection or friendship, except such as could be carried on
under the immediate supervision of her piercing black eyes.
Every night she put her to bed as if she had been an infant,
and, wakening her again in the morning, took her with her
in all her daily toils, — of which, to do her justice, she performed
all the hardest portion, leaving to the girl just enough
to keep her hands employed and her head steady.

The peculiar circumstance which had led her to choose
the old town of Sorrento for her residence, in preference to
any of the beautiful villages which impearl that fertile plain,
was the existence there of a flourishing convent dedicated
to Saint Agnes, under whose protecting shadow her young
charge might more securely spend the earlier years of her
life.

With this view, having hired the domicile we have

[figure description] Page 033.[end figure description]

already described, she lost no time in making the favorable
acquaintance of the sisterhood, — never coming to them
empty-handed. The finest oranges of her garden, the
whitest flax of her spinning, were always reserved as
offerings at the shrine of the patroness whom she sought
to propitiate for her grandchild.

In her earliest childhood the little Agnes was led toddling
to the shrine by her zealous relative; and at the sight of
her fair, sweet, awe-struck face, with its viny mantle of encircling
curls, the torpid bosoms of the sisterhood throbbed
with a strange, new pleasure, which they humbly hoped was
not sinful, — as agreeable things, they found, generally were.
They loved the echoes of her little feet down the damp,
silent aisles of their chapel, and her small, sweet, slender
voice, as she asked strange baby-questions, which, as usual
with baby-questions, hit all the insoluble points of philosophy
and theology exactly on the head.

The child became a special favorite with the Abbess,
Sister Theresa, a tall, thin, bloodless, sad-eyed woman, who
looked as if she might have been cut out of one of the glaciers
of Monte Rosa, but in whose heart the little fair one
had made herself a niche, pushing her way up through, as
you may have seen a lovely blue-fringed gentian standing
in a snow-drift of the Alps with its little ring of melted snow
around it.

Sister Theresa offered to take care of the child at any
time when the grandmother wished to be about her labors;
and so, during her early years, the little one was often
domesticated for days together at the Convent. A perfect
mythology of wonderful stories encircled her, which the
good sisters were never tired of repeating to each other.
They were the simplest sayings and doings of childhood, —

[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]

handfuls of such wild-flowers as bespread the green turf of
nursery-life everywhere, but miraculous blossoms in the
eyes of these good women, whom Saint Agnes had unwittingly
deprived of any power of making comparisons or ever
having Christ's sweetest parable of the heavenly kingdom
enacted in homes of their own.

Old Jocunda, the porteress, never failed to make a sensation
with her one stock-story of how she found the child
standing on her head and crying, — having been put into this
reversed position in consequence of climbing up on a high
stool to get her little fat hand into the vase of holy water,
failing in which Christian attempt, her heels went up and
her head down, greatly to her dismay.

“Nevertheless,” said old Jocunda, gravely, “it showed an
edifying turn in the child; and when I lifted the little thing
up, it stopped crying the minute its little fingers touched the
water, and it made a cross on its forehead as sensible as the
oldest among us. Ah, sisters, there 's grace there, or I 'm
mistaken.”

All the signs of an incipient saint were, indeed, manifested
in the little one. She never played the wild and noisy plays
of common children, but busied herself in making altars and
shrines, which she adorned with the prettiest flowers of the
gardens, and at which she worked hour after hour in the
quietest and happiest earnestness. Her dreams were a constant
source of wonder and edification in the Convent, for
they were all of angels and saints; and many a time, after
hearing one, the sisterhood crossed themselves, and the Abbess
said, “Ex oribus parvulorum.” Always sweet, dutiful,
submissive, cradling herself every night with a lulling of
sweet hymns and infant murmur of prayers, and found sleeping
in her little white bed with her crucifix clasped to her

[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]

bosom, it was no wonder that the Abbess thought her the
special favorite of her divine patroness, and, like her, the
subject of an early vocation to be the celestial bride of One
fairer than the children of men, who should snatch her away
from all earthly things, to be united to Him in a celestial
paradise.

As the child grew older, she often sat at evening with
wide, wondering eyes, listening over and over again to the
story of the fair Saint Agnes: — How she was a princess,
living in her father's palace, of such exceeding beauty and
grace that none saw her but to love her, yet of such sweetness
and humility as passed all comparison; and how, when
a heathen prince would have espoused her to his son, she
said, “Away from me, tempter! for I am betrothed to a
lover who is greater and fairer than any earthly suitor, — he
is so fair that the sun and moon are ravished by his beauty,
so mighty that the angels of heaven are his servants;” how
she bore meekly with persecutions and threatenings and
death for the sake of this unearthly love; and when she had
poured out her blood, how she came to her mourning friends
in ecstatic vision, all white and glistening, with a fair lamb
by her side, and bade them weep not for her, because she
was reigning with Him whom on earth she had preferred to
all other lovers. There was also the legend of the fair Cecilia,
the lovely musician whom angels had rapt away to
their choirs; the story of that queenly saint, Catharine,
who passed through the courts of heaven, and saw the
angels crowned with roses and lilies, and the Virgin on
her throne, who gave her the wedding-ring that espoused
her to be the bride of the King Eternal.

Fed with such legends, it could not be but that a child
with a sensitive, nervous organization and vivid imagination

[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]

should have grown up with an unworldly and spiritual
character, and that a poetic mist should have enveloped
all her outward perceptions similar to that palpitating veil
of blue and lilac vapor that enshrouds the Italian landscape.

Nor is it to be marvelled at, if the results of this system
of education went far beyond what the good old grandmother
intended. For, though a stanch good Christian, after the
manner of those times, yet she had not the slightest mind to
see her grand-daughter a nun; on the contrary, she was
working day and night to add to her dowry, and had in her
eye a reputable middle-aged blacksmith, who was a man of
substance and prudence, to be the husband and keeper of
her precious treasure. In a home thus established she
hoped to enthrone herself, and provide for the rearing of a
generation of stout-limbed girls and boys who should grow
up to make a flourishing household in the land. This subject
she had not yet broached to her grand-daughter, though
daily preparing to do so, — deferring it, it must be told,
from a sort of jealous, yearning craving to have wholly
to herself the child for whom she had lived so many
years.

Antonio, the blacksmith to whom this honor was destined,
was one of those broad-backed, full-chested, long-limbed
fellows one shall often see around Sorrento, with
great, kind, black eyes like those of an ox, and all the
attributes of a healthy, kindly, animal nature. Contentedly
he hammered away at his business; and certainly,
had not Dame Elsie of her own providence elected him
to be the husband of her fair grand-daughter, he would
never have thought of the matter himself; but, opening
the black eyes aforenamed upon the girl, he perceived that

[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]

she was fair, and also received an inner light through
Dame Elsie as to the amount of her dowry; and, putting
these matters together, conceived a kindness for the maiden,
and awaited with tranquillity the time when he should
be allowed to commence his wooing.

p699-043 CHAPTER V. IL PADRE FRANCESCO.

[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]

The next morning Elsie awoke, as was her custom,
when the very faintest hue of dawn streaked the horizon.
A hen who has seen a hawk balancing his wings and
cawing in mid-air over her downy family could not have
awakened with her feathers, metaphorically speaking, in a
more bristling state of caution.

“Spirits in the gorge, quotha?” said she to herself, as
she vigorously adjusted her dress. “I believe so, — spirits
in good sound bodies, I believe; and next we shall
hear, there will be rope-ladders, and climbings, and the
Lord knows what. I shall go to confession this very
morning, and tell Father Francesco the danger; and instead
of taking her down to sell oranges, suppose I send
her to the sisters to carry the ring and a basket of oranges?”

“Ah, ah!” she said, pausing, after she was dressed, and
addressing a coarse print of Saint Agnes pasted against
the wall, — “you look very meek there, and it was a
great thing no doubt to die as you did; but if you 'd lived
to be married and bring up a family of girls, you 'd have
known something greater. Please, don't take offence with
a poor old woman who has got into the way of speaking
her mind freely! I 'm foolish, and don't know much, —
so, dear lady, pray for me!” And old Elsie bent her

[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]

knee and crossed herself reverently, and then went out,
leaving her young charge still sleeping.

It was yet dusky dawn when she might have been seen
kneeling, with her sharp, clear-cut profile, at the grate of
a confession-box in a church in Sorrento. Within was
seated a personage who will have some influence on our
story, and who must therefore be somewhat minutely introduced
to the reader.

Il Padre Francesco had only within the last year arrived
in the neighborhood, having been sent as superior
of a brotherhood of Capuchins, whose convent was perched
on a crag in the vicinity. With this situation came a
pastoral care of the district; and Elsie and her grand-daughter
found in him a spiritual pastor very different
from the fat, jolly, easy Brother Girolamo, to whose place
he had been appointed. The latter had been one of those
numerous priests taken from the peasantry, who never rise
above the average level of thought of the body from which
they are drawn. Easy, gossipy, fond of good living and
good stories, sympathetic in troubles and in joys, he had
been a general favorite in the neighborhood, without exerting
any particularly spiritualizing influence.

It required but a glance at Father Francesco to see
that he was in all respects the opposite of this. It was
evident that he came from one of the higher classes, by
that indefinable air of birth and breeding which makes
itself felt under every change of costume. Who he might
be, what might have been his past history, what rank he
might have borne, what part played in the great warfare
of life, was all of course sunk in the oblivion of his religious
profession, where, as at the grave, a man laid
down name and fame and past history and worldly goods,

[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]

and took up a coarse garb and a name chosen from the
roll of the saints, in sign that the world that had known
him should know him no more.

Imagine a man between thirty and forty, with that round,
full, evenly developed head, and those chiselled features,
which one sees on ancient busts and coins no less than in
the streets of modern Rome. The cheeks were sunken
and sallow; the large, black, melancholy eyes had a wistful,
anxious, penetrative expression, that spoke a stringent,
earnest spirit, which, however deep might be the grave
in which it lay buried, had not yet found repose. The
long, thin, delicately formed hands were emaciated and
bloodless; they clasped with a nervous eagerness a rosary
and crucifix of ebony and silver, — the only mark of
luxury that could be discerned in a costume unusually
threadbare and squalid. The whole picture of the man,
as he sat there, had it been painted and hung in a gallery,
was such as must have stopped every person of a
certain amount of sensibility before it with the conviction
that behind that strong, melancholy, earnest figure
and face lay one of those hidden histories of human
passion in which the vivid life of mediæval Italy was so
fertile.

He was listening to Elsie, as she kneeled, with that easy
air of superiority which marks a practised man of the
world, yet with a grave attention which showed that her
communication had awakened the deepest interest in his
mind. Every few moments he moved slightly in his seat,
and interrupted the flow of the narrative by an inquiry
concisely put, in tones which, clear and low, had a solemn
and severe distinctness, producing, in the still, dusky twilight
of the church, an almost ghostly effect.

[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]

When the communication was over, he stepped out of the
confessional and said to Elsie in parting, — “My daughter,
you have done well to take this in time. The devices of
Satan in our corrupt times are numerous and artful, and
they who keep the Lord's sheep must not sleep. Before
many days I will call and examine the child; meanwhile I
approve your course.”

It was curious to see the awe-struck, trembling manner in
which old Elsie, generally so intrepid and commanding, stood
before this man in his brown rough woollen gown with his
corded waist; but she had an instinctive perception of the
presence of the man of superior birth no less than a reverence
for the man of religion.

After she had departed from the church, the Capuchin
stood lost in thought; and to explain his revery, we must
throw some further light on his history.

Il Padre Francesco, as his appearance and manner intimated,
was in truth from one of the most distinguished families
of Florence. He was one of those whom an ancient
writer characterizes as “men of longing desire.” Born with
a nature of restless stringency that seemed to doom him
never to know repose, excessive in all things, he had made
early trial of ambition, of war, and of what the gallants of
his time called love, — plunging into all the dissipated excesses
of a most dissolute age, and outdoing in luxury and
extravagance the foremost of his companions.

The wave of a great religious impulse — which in our
times would have been called a revival — swept over the
city of Florence, and bore him, with multitudes of others, to
listen to the fervid preaching of the Dominican monk, Jerome
Savonarola; and amid the crowd that trembled, wept,
and beat their breasts under his awful denunciations, he, too,

[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]

felt within himself a heavenly call, — the death of an old
life, and the uprising of a new purpose.

The colder manners and more repressed habits of modern
times can give no idea of the wild fervor of a religious
revival among a people so passionate and susceptible to
impressions as the Italians. It swept society like a spring
torrent from the sides of the Apennines, bearing all before
it. Houses were sacked with religious fervor by penitent
owners, and licentious pictures and statuary and books, and
all the thousand temptations and appliances of a luxurious
age, were burned in the great public square. Artists convicted
of impure and licentious designs threw their palettes
and brushes into the expiatory flames, and retired to convents,
till called forth by the voice of the preacher, and bid
to turn their art into higher channels. Since the days of
Saint Francis no such profound religious impulse had agitated
the Italian community.

In our times a conversion is signalized by few outward
changes, however deep the inner life; but the life of the
Middle Ages was profoundly symbolical, and always required
the help of material images in its expression.

The gay and dissolute young Lorenzo Sforza took leave
of the world with rites of awful solemnity. He made his
will and disposed of all his worldly property, and assembling
his friends, bade them the farewell of a dying man. Arrayed
as for the grave, he was laid in his coffin, and thus
carried from his stately dwelling by the brethren of the
Misericordia, who, in their ghostly costume, with mournful
chants and lighted candles, bore him to the tomb of his ancestors,
where the coffin was deposited in the vault, and its
occupant passed the awful hours of the night in darkness
and solitude. Thence he was carried, the next day, almost

[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]

in a state of insensibility, to a neighboring convent of the
severest order, where, for some weeks, he observed a penitential
retreat of silence and prayer, neither seeing nor hearing
any living being but his spiritual director.

The effect of all this on an ardent and sensitive temperament
can scarcely be conceived; and it is not to be wondered
at that the once gay and luxurious Lorenzo Sforza,
when emerging from this tremendous discipline, was so
wholly lost in the worn and weary Padre Francesco that it
seemed as if in fact he had died and another had stepped
into his place. The face was ploughed deep with haggard
furrows, and the eyes were as those of a man who has seen
the fearful secrets of another life. He voluntarily sought a
post as far removed as possible from the scenes of his early
days, so as more completely to destroy his identity with the
past; and he devoted himself with enthusiasm to the task of
awakening to a higher spiritual life the indolent, self-indulgent
monks of his order, and the ignorant peasantry of the
vicinity.

But he soon discovered, what every earnest soul learns
who has been baptized into a sense of things invisible, how
utterly powerless and inert any mortal man is to inspire
others with his own insights and convictions. With bitter
discouragement and chagrin, he saw that the spiritual man
must forever lift the dead weight of all the indolence and
indifference and animal sensuality that surround him, — that
the curse of Cassandra is upon him, forever to burn and
writhe under awful visions of truths which no one around
him will regard. In early life the associate only of the
cultivated and the refined, Father Francesco could not but
experience at times an insupportable ennui in listening to
the confessions of people who had never learned either to

[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]

think or to feel with any degree of distinctness, and whom
his most fervent exhortations could not lift above the most
trivial interests of a mere animal life. He was weary of
the childish quarrels and bickerings of the monks, of their
puerility, of their selfishness and self-indulgence, of their
hopeless vulgarity of mind, and utterly discouraged with
their inextricable labyrinths of deception. A melancholy
deep as the grave seized on him, and he redoubled his austerities,
in the hope that by making life painful he might
make it also short.

But the first time that the clear, sweet tones of Agnes
rang in his ears at the confessional, and her words, so full of
unconscious poetry and repressed genius, came like a strain
of sweet music through the grate, he felt at his heart a thrill
to which it had long been a stranger, and which seemed to
lift the weary, aching load from off his soul, as if some invisible
angel had borne it up on his wings.

In his worldly days he had known women as the gallants
in Boccaccio's romances knew them, and among them one
enchantress whose sorceries had kindled in his heart one of
those fatal passions which burn out the whole of a man's
nature, and leave it, like a sacked city, only a smouldering
heap of ashes. Deepest, therefore, among his vows of
renunciation had been those which divided him from all
womankind. The gulf that parted him and them was in his
mind deep as hell, and he thought of the sex only in the
light of temptation and danger. For the first time in his
life, an influence serene, natural, healthy, and sweet breathed
over him from the mind of a woman, — an influence so
heavenly and peaceful that he did not challenge or suspect
it, but rather opened his worn heart insensibly to it, as one
in a fetid chamber naturally breathes freer when the fresh
air is admitted.

[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]

How charming it was to find his most spiritual exhortations
seized upon with the eager comprehension of a nature
innately poetic and ideal! Nay, it sometimes seemed to
him as if the suggestions which he gave her dry and leafless
she brought again to him in miraculous clusters of flowers,
like the barren rod of Joseph, which broke into blossoms
when he was betrothed to the spotless Mary; and yet, withal,
she was so humbly unconscious, so absolutely ignorant of the
beauty of all she said and thought, that she impressed him
less as a mortal woman than as one of those divine miracles
in feminine form of which he had heard in the legends of the
saints.

Thenceforward his barren, discouraged life began to blossom
with way-side flowers, — and he mistrusted not the
miracle, because the flowers were all heavenly. The pious
thought or holy admonition that he saw trodden under the
swinish feet of the monks he gathered up again in hope, —
she would understand it; and gradually all his thoughts became
like carrier-doves, which, having once learned the way
to a favorite haunt, are ever fluttering to return thither.

Such is the wonderful power of human sympathy, that the
discovery even of the existence of a soul capable of understanding
our inner life often operates as a perfect charm;
every thought, and feeling, and aspiration carries with it a
new value, from the interwoven consciousness that attends it
of the worth it would bear to that other mind; so that, while
that person lives, our existence is doubled in value, even
though oceans divide us.

The cloud of hopeless melancholy which had brooded over
the mind of Father Francesco lifted and sailed away, he
knew not why, he knew not when. A secret joyfulness and
alacrity possessed his spirits; his prayers became more

[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]

fervent and his praises more frequent. Until now, his meditations
had been most frequently those of fear and wrath, —
the awful majesty of God, the terrible punishment of sinners,
which he conceived with all that haggard, dreadful
sincerity of vigor which characterized the modern Etruscan
phase of religion of which the “Inferno” of Dante was the
exponent and the out-come. His preachings and his exhortations
had dwelt on that lurid world seen by the severe
Florentine, at whose threshold hope forever departs, and
around whose eternal circles of living torture the shivering
spirit wanders dismayed and blasted by terror.

He had been shocked and discouraged to find how utterly
vain had been his most intense efforts to stem the course
of sin by presenting these images of terror: how hard natures
had listened to them with only a coarse and cruel
appetite, which seemed to increase their hardness and
brutality; and how timid ones had been withered by them,
like flowers scorched by the blast of a furnace; how, in
fact, as in the case of those cruel executions and bloody
tortures then universal in the jurisprudence of Europe,
these pictures of eternal torture seemed to exert a morbid
demoralizing influence which hurried on the growth of
iniquity.

But since his acquaintance with Agnes, without his knowing
exactly why, thoughts of the Divine Love had floated
into his soul, filling it with a golden cloud like that which
of old rested over the mercy-seat in that sacred inner temple
where the priest was admitted alone. He became more
affable and tender, more tolerant to the erring, more fond of
little children; would stop sometimes to lay his hand on the
head of a child, or to raise up one who lay overthrown in
the street. The song of little birds and the voices of

[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]

animal life became to him full of tenderness; and his prayers
by the sick and dying seemed to have a melting power, such
as he had never known before. It was spring in his soul,—
soft, Italian spring, — such as brings out the musky
breath of the cyclamen, and the faint, tender perfume of the
primrose, in every moist dell of the Apennines.

A year passed in this way, perhaps the best and happiest
of his troubled life, — a year in which, insensibly to himself,
the weekly interviews with Agnes at the confessional became
the rallying-points around which the whole of his life was
formed, and she the unsuspected spring of his inner being.

It was his duty, he said to himself, to give more than
usual time and thought to the working and polishing of this
wondrous jewel which had so unexpectedly been intrusted
to him for the adorning of his Master's crown; and so
long as he conducted with the strictest circumspection of
his office, what had he to fear in the way of so delightful
a duty? He had never touched her hand; never had
even the folds of her passing drapery brushed against his
garments of mortification and renunciation; never, even in
pastoral benediction, had he dared lay his hand on that
beautiful head. It is true, he had not forbidden himself
to raise his glance sometimes when he saw her coming in
at the church-door and gliding up the aisle with downcast
eyes, and thoughts evidently so far above earth, that she
seemed, like one of Frà Angelico's angels, to be moving
on a cloud, so encompassed with stillness and sanctity that
he held his breath as she passed.

But in the confession of Dame Elsie that morning he
had received a shock which threw his whole interior being
into a passionate agitation which dismayed and astonished
him.

[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]

The thought of Agnes, his spotless lamb, exposed to lawless
and licentious pursuit, of whose nature and probabilities
his past life gave him only too clear an idea, was of
itself a very natural source of anxiety. But Elsie had
unveiled to him her plans for her marriage, and consulted
him on the propriety of placing Agnes immediately under
the protection of the husband she had chosen for her; and
it was this part of her communication which had awakened
the severest internal recoil, and raised a tumult of passions
which the priest vainly sought either to assuage or understand.

As soon as his morning duties were over, he repaired
to his convent, sought his cell, and, prostrate on his face
before the crucifix, began his internal reckoning with himself.
The day passed in fasting and solitude.

It is now golden evening, and on the square, flat roof
of the convent, which, high-perched on a crag, overlooks
the bay, one might observe a dark figure slowly pacing
backward and forward. It is Father Francesco; and as
he walks up and down, one could see by his large, bright,
dilated eye, by the vivid red spot on either sunken cheek,
and by the nervous energy of his movements, that he is
in the very height of some mental crisis, — in that state
of placid extase in which the subject supposes himself
perfectly calm, because every nerve is screwed to the
highest point of tension and can vibrate no more.

What oceans had that day rolled over him and swept
him, as one may see a little boat rocked on the capricious
surges of the Mediterranean! Were, then, all his
strivings and agonies in vain? Did he love this woman
with any earthly love? Was he jealous of the thought
of a future husband? Was it a tempting demon that said

[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]

to him, “Lorenzo Sforza might have shielded this treasure
from the profanation of lawless violence, from the
brute grasp of an inappreciative peasant, but Father
Francesco cannot”? There was a moment when his
whole being vibrated with a perception of what a marriage
bond might have been that was indeed a sacrament,
and that bound together two pure and loyal souls who
gave life and courage to each other in all holy purposes
and heroic deeds; and he almost feared that he had
cursed his vows, — those awful vows, at whose remembrance
his inmost soul shivered through every nerve.

But after hours of prayer and struggle, and wave after
wave of agonizing convulsion, he gained one of those high
points in human possibility where souls can stand a little
while at a time, and where all things seem so transfigured
and pure that they fancy themselves thenceforward forever
victorious over evil.

As he walks up and down in the gold-and-purple evening
twilight, his mind seems to him calm as that glowing
sea that reflects the purple shores of Ischia, and the
quaint, fantastic grottos and cliffs of Capri. All is golden
and glowing; he sees all clear; he is delivered from his
spiritual enemies; he treads them under his feet.

Yes, he says to himself, he loves Agnes, — loves her
all-sacredly as her guardian angel does, who ever beholdeth
the face of her Father in Heaven. Why, then, does
he shrink from her marriage? Is it not evident? Has
that tender soul, that poetic nature, that aspiring genius,
anything in common with the vulgar, coarse details of a
peasant's life? Will not her beauty always draw the eye
of the licentious, expose her artless innocence to solicitation
which will annoy her and bring upon her head the

[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]

inconsiderate jealousy of her husband? Think of Agnes
made subject to the rude authority, to the stripes and correction,
which men of the lower class, under the promptings
of jealousy, do not scruple to inflict on their wives! What
career did society, as then organized, present to such a
nature, so perilously gifted in body and mind? He has
the answer. The Church has opened a career to woman
which all the world denies her.

He remembers the story of the dyer's daughter of Siena,
the fair Saint Catharine. In his youth he had often visited
the convent where one of the first artists of Italy has
immortalized her conflicts and her victories, and knelt with
his mother at the altar where she now communes with the
faithful. He remembered how, by her sanctity, her humility,
and her holy inspirations of soul, she had risen to
the courts of princes, whither she had been sent as ambassadress
to arrange for the interests of the Church; and
then rose before his mind's eye the gorgeous picture of
Pinturicchio, where, borne in celestial repose and purity
amid all the powers and dignitaries of the Church, she is
canonized as one of those that shall reign and intercede
with Christ in heaven.

Was it wrong, therefore, in him, though severed from
all womankind by a gulf of irrevocable vows, that he
should feel a kind of jealous property in this gifted and
beautiful creature? and though he might not, even in
thought, dream of possessing her himself, was there sin in
the vehement energy with which his whole nature rose up
in him to say that no other man should, — that she should
be the bride of Heaven alone?

Certainly, if there were, it lurked far out of sight; and
the priest had a case that might have satisfied a conscience

[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]

even more fastidious; — and he felt a sort of triumph in the
results of his mental scrutiny.

Yes, she should ascend from glory to glory, — but his
should be the hand that should lead her upward. He would
lead her within the consecrated grate, — he would pronounce
the awful words that should make it sacrilege for
all other men to approach her; and yet through life he
should be the guardian and director of her soul, the one
being to whom she should render an obedience as unlimited
as that which belongs to Christ alone.

Such were the thoughts of this victorious hour, — which,
alas! were destined to fade as those purple skies and golden
fires gradually went out, leaving, in place of their light and
glory, only the lurid glow of Vesuvius.

p699-057 CHAPTER VI. THE WALK TO THE CONVENT.

[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]

Elsie returned from the confessional a little after sunrise,
much relieved and satisfied. Padre Francesco had
shown such a deep interest in her narrative that she was
highly gratified. Then he had given her advice which
exactly accorded with her own views; and such advice is
always regarded as an eminent proof of sagacity in the
giver.

On the point of the marriage he had recommended delay, —
a course quite in accordance with Elsie's desire, who,
curiously enough, ever since her treaty of marriage with
Antonio had been commenced, had cherished the most
whimsical, jealous dislike of him, as if he were about to
get away her grandchild from her; and this rose at times
so high that she could scarcely speak peaceably to him, — a
course of things which caused Antonio to open wide his
great soft ox-eyes, and wonder at the ways of womankind;
but he waited the event in philosophic tranquillity.

The morning sunbeams were shooting many a golden
shaft among the orange-trees when Elsie returned and
found Agnes yet kneeling at her prayers.

“Now, my little heart,” said the old woman, when their
morning meal was done, “I am going to give you a holiday
to-day. I will go with you to the Convent, and you shall
spend the day with the sisters, and so carry Saint Agnes
her ring.”

[figure description] Page 053.[end figure description]

“Oh, thank you, grandmamma! how good you are! May
I stop a little on the way, and pick some cyclamen and myrtles
and daisies for her shrine?”

“Just as you like, child; but if you are going to do that,
we must be off soon, for I must be at my stand betimes to
sell oranges: I had them all picked this morning while my
little darling was asleep.”

“You always do everything, grandmamma, and leave me
nothing to do: it is not fair. But, grandmamma, if we are
going to get flowers by the way, let us follow down the
stream, through the gorge, out upon the sea-beach, and so
walk along the sands, and go by the back path up the
rocks to the Convent: that walk is so shady and lovely
at this time in the morning, and it is so fresh along by
the sea-side!”

“As you please, dearie; but first fill a little basket with
our best oranges for the sisters.”

“Trust me for that!” And the girl ran eagerly to the
house, and drew from her treasures a little white wicker
basket, which she proceeded to line curiously with orange-leaves,
sticking sprays of blossoms in a wreath round the
border.

“Now for some of our best blood-oranges!” she said; —
“old Jocunda says they put her in mind of pomegranates.
And here are some of these little ones, — see here, grandmamma!”
she exclaimed, as she turned and held up a
branch just broken, where five small golden balls grew
together with a pearly spray of white buds just beyond
them.

The exercise of springing up for the branch had sent
a vivid glow into her clear brown cheek, and her eyes were
dilated with excitement and pleasure; and as she stood

[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]

joyously holding the branch, while the flickering shadows fell on
her beautiful face, she seemed more like a painter's dream
than a reality.

Her grandmother stood a moment admiring her.

“She's too good and too pretty for Antonio or any other
man: she ought to be kept to look at,” she said to herself.
“If I could keep her always, no man should have her; but
death will come, and youth and beauty go, and so somebody
must care for her.”

When the basket was filled and trimmed, Agnes took it
on her arm. Elsie raised and poised on her head the great
square basket that contained her merchandise, and began
walking erect and straight down the narrow rocky stairs
that led into the gorge, holding her distaff with its white
flax in her hands, and stepping as easily as if she bore no
burden.

Agnes followed her with light, irregular movements,
glancing aside from time to time, as a tuft of flowers or
a feathery spray of leaves attracted her fancy. In a few
moments her hands were too full, and her woollen apron of
many-colored stripes was raised over one arm to hold her
treasures, while a hymn to Saint Agnes, which she constantly
murmured to herself, came in little ripples of sound,
now from behind a rock, and now out of a tuft of bushes, to
show where the wanderer was hid. The song, like many
Italian ones, would be nothing in English, — only a musical
repetition of sweet words to a very simple and childlike idea,
the bella, bella, bella ringing out in every verse with a tender
joyousness that seemed in harmony with the waving ferns
and pendent flowers and long ivy-wreaths from among which
its notes issued. “Beautiful and sweet Agnes,” it said, in a
thousand tender repetitions, “make me like thy little white

[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]

lamb! Beautiful Agnes, take me to the green fields where
Christ's lambs are feeding! Sweeter than the rose, fairer
than the lily, take me where thou art!”

At the bottom of the ravine a little stream tinkles its way
among stones so mossy in their deep, cool shadow as to appear
all verdure; for seldom the light of the sun can reach
the darkness where they lie. A little bridge, hewn from
solid rock, throws across the shrunken stream an arch much
wider than its waters seem to demand; for in spring and
autumn, when the torrents wash down from the mountains,
its volume is often suddenly increased.

This bridge was so entirely and evenly grown over with
short thick moss that it might seem cut of some strange
kind of living green velvet, and here and there it was
quaintly embroidered with small blossoming tufts of white
alyssum, or feathers of ferns and maiden's-hair which shook
and trembled to every breeze. Nothing could be lovelier
than this mossy bridge, when some stray sunbeam, slanting
up the gorge, took a fancy to light it up with golden hues,
and give transparent greenness to the tremulous thin leaves
that waved upon it.

On this spot Elsie paused a moment, and called back
after Agnes, who had disappeared into one of those deep
grottos with which the sides of the gorge are perforated, and
which are almost entirely veiled by the pendent ivy-wreaths.

“Agnes! Agnes! wild girl! come quick!”

Only the sound of “Bella, bella Angella” came out of the
ivy-leaves to answer her; but it sounded so happy and innocent
that Elsie could not forbear a smile, and in a moment
Agnes came springing down with a quantity of the
feathery lycopodium in her hands, which grows nowhere
so well as in moist and dripping places.

[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]

Out of her apron were hanging festoons of golden broom,
crimson gladiolus, and long, trailing sprays of ivy; while she
held aloft in triumph a handful of the most superb cyclamen,
whose rosy crowns rise so beautifully above their dark quaint
leaves in moist and shady places.

“See, see, grandmother, what an offering I have! Saint
Agnes will be pleased with me to-day; for I believe in her
heart she loves flowers better than gems.”

“Well, well, wild one, — time flies, we must hurry.” And
crossing the bridge quickly, the grandmother struck into a
mossy foot-path that led them, after some walking, under the
old Roman bridge at the gateway of Sorrento. Two hundred
feet above their heads rose the mighty arches, enamelled
with moss and feathered with ferns all the way; and
below this bridge the gorge grew somewhat wider, its sides
gradually receding and leaving a beautiful flat tract of land,
which was laid out as an orange-orchard. The golden fruit
was shut in by rocky walls on either side which here formed
a perfect hot-bed, and no oranges were earlier or finer.

Through this beautiful orchard the two at length emerged
from the gorge upon the sea-sands, where lay the blue Mediterranean
swathed in bands of morning mist, its many-colored
waters shimmering with a thousand reflected lights, and
old Capri panting through sultry blue mists, and Vesuvius
with his cloud-spotted sides and smoke-wreathed top burst
into view. At a little distance a boat-load of bronzed fishermen
had just drawn in a net, from which they were throwing
out a quantity of sardines, which flapped and fluttered in
the sunshine like scales of silver. The wind blowing freshly
bore thousands of little purple waves to break one after
another at the foamy line which lay on the sand.

Agnes ran gayly along the beach with her flowers and

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vines fluttering from her gay striped apron, and her cheeks
flushed with exercise and pleasure, — sometimes stopping
and turning with animation to her grandmother to point out
the various floral treasures that enamelled every crevice and
rift of the steep wall of rock which rose perpendicularly
above their heads in that whole line of the shore which is
crowned with the old city of Sorrento: and surely never did
rocky wall show to the open sea a face more picturesque and
flowery. The deep red cliff was hollowed here and there
into fanciful grottos, draped with every varied hue and form
of vegetable beauty. Here a crevice high in air was all
abloom with purple gillyflower, and depending in festoons
above it the golden blossoms of the broom; here a cleft
seemed to be a nestling-place for a colony of gladiolus, with
its crimson flowers and blade-like leaves; here the silver-frosted
foliage of the miller-geranium, or of the wormwood,
toned down the extravagant brightness of other blooms by
its cooler tints. In some places it seemed as if a sort of
floral cascade were tumbling confusedly over the rocks,
mingling all hues and all forms in a tangled mass of
beauty.

“Well, well,” said old Elsie, as Agnes pointed to some
superb gillyflowers which grew nearly half-way up the
precipice, — “is the child possessed? You have all the
gorge in your apron already. Stop looking, and let us
hurry on.”

After a half-hour's walk, they came to a winding staircase
cut in the rock, which led them a zigzag course up through
galleries and grottos looking out through curious windows
and loop-holes upon the sea, till finally they emerged at the
old sculptured portal of a shady garden which was surrounded
by the cloistered arcades of the Convent of Saint
Agnes.

[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]

The Convent of Saint Agnes was one of those monuments
in which the piety of the Middle Ages delighted to commemorate
the triumphs of the new Christianity over the old
Heathenism.

The balmy climate and paradisiacal charms of Sorrento
and the adjacent shores of Naples had made them favorite
resorts during the latter period of the Roman Empire, — a
period when the whole civilized world seemed to human
view about to be dissolved in the corruption of universal
sensuality. The shores of Baiæ were witnesses of the orgies
and cruelties of Nero and a court made in his likeness,
and the palpitating loveliness of Capri became the hot-bed
of the unnatural vices of Tiberius. The whole of Southern
Italy was sunk in a debasement of animalism and ferocity
which seemed irrecoverable, and would have been so, had it
not been for the handful of salt which a Galilean peasant
had about that time cast into the putrid, fermenting mass of
human society.

We must not wonder at the zeal which caused the artistic
Italian nature to love to celebrate the passing away of an
era of unnatural vice and demoniac cruelty by visible images
of the purity, the tenderness, the universal benevolence which
Jesus had brought into the world.

Some time about the middle of the thirteenth century, it
had been a favorite enterprise of a princess of a royal family
in Naples to erect a convent to Saint Agnes, the guardian
of female purity, out of the wrecks and remains of an ancient
temple of Venus, whose white pillars and graceful acanthus-leaves
once crowned a portion of the precipice on which the
town was built, and were reflected from the glassy blue of
the sea at its feet. It was said that this princess was the first
lady abbess. Be that as it may, it proved to be a favorite

[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]

retreat for many ladies of rank and religious aspiration,
whom ill-fortune in some of its varying forms led to seek
its quiet shades, and it was well and richly endowed by its
royal patrons.

It was built after the manner of conventual buildings
generally, — in a hollow square, with a cloistered walk
around the inside looking upon a garden.

The portal at which Agnes and her grandmother knocked,
after ascending the winding staircase cut in the precipice,
opened through an arched passage into this garden.

As the ponderous door swung open, it was pleasant to
hear the lulling sound of a fountain, which came forth
with a gentle patter, like that of soft summer rain, and to
see the waving of rose-bushes and golden jessamines, and
smell the perfumes of orange-blossoms mingling with those
of a thousand other flowers.

The door was opened by an odd-looking portress. She
might be seventy-five or eighty; her cheeks were of the
color of very yellow parchment drawn in dry wrinkles;
her eyes were those large, dark, lustrous ones so common
in her country, but seemed, in the general decay and shrinking
of every other part of her face, to have acquired a wild,
unnatural appearance; while the falling away of her teeth
left nothing to impede the meeting of her hooked nose with
her chin. Add to this, she was hump-backed, and twisted in
her figure; and one needs all the force of her very good-natured,
kindly smile to redeem the image of poor old
Jocunda from association with that of some Thracian witch,
and cause one to see in her the appropriate portress of a
Christian institution.

Nevertheless, Agnes fell upon her neck and imprinted a
very fervent kiss upon what was left of her withered cheek,

[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]

and was repaid by a shower of those epithets of endearment
which in the language of Italy fly thick and fast as the petals
of the orange-blossom from her groves.

“Well, well,” said old Elsie, — “I 'm going to leave her
here to-day. You 've no objections, I suppose?”

“Bless the sweet lamb, no! She belongs here of good
right. I believe blessed Saint Agnes has adopted her; for
I 've seen her smile, plain as could be, when the little one
brought her flowers.”

“Well, Agnes,” said the old woman, “I shall come for
you after the Ave Maria.” Saying which, she lifted her
basket and departed.

The garden where the two were left was one of the most
peaceful retreats that the imagination of a poet could create.

Around it ran on all sides the Byzantine arches of a
cloistered walk, which, according to the quaint, rich fashion
of that style, had been painted with vermilion, blue, and
gold. The vaulted roof was spangled with gold stars on a
blue ground, and along the sides was a series of fresco pictures
representing the various scenes in the life of Saint
Agnes; and as the foundress of the Convent was royal in
her means, there was no lack either of gold or gems or of
gorgeous painting.

Full justice was done in the first picture to the princely
wealth and estate of the fair Agnes, who was represented as
a pure-looking, pensive child, standing in a thoughtful attitude,
with long ripples of golden hair flowing down over a
simple white tunic, and her small hands clasping a cross on
her bosom, while, kneeling at her feet, obsequious slaves and
tire-women were offering the richest gems and the most
gorgeous robes to her serious and abstracted gaze.

[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]

In another, she was represented as walking modestly to
school, and winning the admiration of the son of the Roman
Prætor, who fell sick — so says the legend — for the love
of her.

Then there was the demand of her hand in marriage by
the princely father of the young man, and her calm rejection
of the gorgeous gifts and splendid gems which he had
brought to purchase her consent.

Then followed in order her accusation before the tribunals
as a Christian, her trial, and the various scenes of her
martyrdom.

Although the drawing of the figures and the treatment of
the subjects had the quaint stiffness of the thirteenth century,
their general effect, as seen from the shady bowers of the
garden, was of a solemn brightness, a strange and fanciful
richness, which was poetical and impressive.

In the centre of the garden was a fountain of white
marble, which evidently was the wreck of something that
had belonged to the old Greek temple. The statue of
a nymph sat on a green mossy pedestal in the midst of a
sculptured basin, and from a partially reversed urn on which
she was leaning a clear stream of water dashed down from
one mossy fragment to another, till it lost itself in the placid
pool.

The figure and face of this nymph, in their classic finish
of outline, formed a striking contrast to the drawing of the
Byzantine paintings within the cloisters, and their juxtaposition
in the same enclosure seemed a presentation of the
spirit of a past and present era: the past so graceful in line,
so perfect and airy in conception, so utterly without spiritual
aspiration or life; the present limited in artistic power, but
so earnest, so intense, seeming to struggle and burn, amid its

[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]

stiff and restricted boundaries, for the expression of some
diviner phase of humanity.

Nevertheless, the nymph of the fountain, different in style
and execution as it was, was so fair a creature, that it was
thought best, after the spirit of those days, to purge her from
all heathen and improper histories by baptizing her in the
waters of her own fountain, and bestowing on her the name
of the saint to whose convent she was devoted. The simple
sisterhood, little conversant in nice points of antiquity, regarded
her as Saint Agnes dispensing the waters of purity
to her convent; and marvellous and sacred properties were
ascribed to the water, when taken fasting with a sufficient
number of prayers and other religious exercises. All around
the neighborhood of this fountain the ground was one bed of
blue and white violets, whose fragrance filled the air, and
which were deemed by the nuns to have come up there in
especial token of the favor with which Saint Agnes regarded
the conversion of this heathen relic to pious and Christian
uses.

This nymph had been an especial favorite of the childhood
of Agnes, and she had always had a pleasure which
she could not exactly account for in gazing upon it. It is
seldom that one sees in the antique conception of the immortals
any trace of human feeling. Passionless perfection
and repose seem to be their uniform character. But now
and then from the ruins of Southern Italy fragments have
been dug, not only pure in outline, but invested with a
strange pathetic charm, as if the calm, inviolable circle of
divinity had been touched by some sorrowing sense of that
unexplained anguish with which the whole lower creation
groans. One sees this mystery of expression in the face of
that strange and beautiful Psyche which still enchants the

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Museum of Naples. Something of this charm of mournful
pathos lingered on the beautiful features of this nymph, —
an expression so delicate and shadowy that it seemed to address
itself only to finer natures. It was as if all the silent,
patient woe and discouragement of a dumb antiquity had
been congealed into this memorial. Agnes was often conscious,
when a child, of being saddened by it, and yet drawn
towards it with a mysterious attraction.

About this fountain, under the shadow of bending rosetrees
and yellow jessamines, was a circle of garden-seats,
adopted also from the ruins of the past. Here a graceful
Corinthian capital, with every white acanthus-leaf perfect,
stood in a mat of acanthus-leaves of Nature's own making,
glossy green and sharply cut; and there was a long portion
of a frieze sculptured with graceful dancing figures; and in
another place a fragment of a fluted column, with lycopodium
and colosseum vine hanging from its fissures in graceful
draping. On these seats Agnes had dreamed away many a
tranquil hour, making garlands of violets, and listening to
the marvellous legends of old Jocunda.

In order to understand anything of the true idea of conventual
life in those days, we must consider that books were
as yet unknown, except as literary rarities, and reading and
writing were among the rare accomplishments of the higher
classes; and that Italy, from the time that the great Roman
Empire fell and broke into a thousand shivers, had been
subject to a continual series of conflicts and struggles, which
took from life all security. Norman, Dane, Sicilian, Spaniard,
Frenchman, and German mingled and struggled, now
up and now down; and every struggle was attended by the
little ceremonies of sacking towns, burning villages, and
routing out entire populations to utter misery and

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wretchedness. During these tumultuous ages, those buildings consecrated
by a religion recognized alike by all parties afforded
to misfortune the only inviolable asylum, and to feeble and
discouraged spirits the only home safe from the prospect of
reverses.

If the destiny of woman is a problem that calls for grave
attention even in our enlightened times, and if she is too
often a sufferer from the inevitable movements of society,
what must have been her position and needs in those ruder
ages, unless the genius of Christianity had opened refuges
for her weakness, made inviolable by the awful sanctions of
religion?

What could they do, all these girls and women together,
with the twenty-four long hours of every day, without reading
or writing, and without the care of children? Enough:
with their multiplied diurnal prayer periods, with each its
chants and ritual of observances, — with the preparation for
meals, and the clearing away thereafter, — with the care of
the chapel, shrine, sacred gifts, drapery, and ornaments, —
with embroidering altar-cloths and making sacred tapers, —
with preparing conserves of rose-leaves and curious spiceries,—
with mixing drugs for the sick, — with all those mutual
offices and services to each other which their relations in one
family gave rise to, — and with divers feminine gossipries
and harmless chatterings and cooings, one can conceive that
these dove-cots of the Church presented often some of the
most tranquil scenes of those convulsive and disturbed periods.

Human nature probably had its varieties there as otherwhere.
There were there the domineering and the weak,
the ignorant and the vulgar, and the patrician and the
princess, and though professedly all brought on the footing

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of sisterly equality, we are not to suppose any Utopian degree
of perfection among them. The way of pure spirituality
was probably, in the convent as well as out, that strait
and narrow one which there be few to find. There, as
elsewhere, the devotee who sought to progress faster toward
heaven than suited the paces of her fellow-travellers was
reckoned a troublesome enthusiast, till she got far enough in
advance to be worshipped as a saint.

Sister Theresa, the abbess of this convent, was the youngest
daughter in a princely Neapolitan family, who from her
cradle had been destined to the cloister, in order that her
brother and sister might inherit more splendid fortunes and
form more splendid connections. She had been sent to this
place too early to have much recollection of any other mode
of life; and when the time came to take the irrevocable
step, she renounced with composure a world she had never
known.

Her brother had endowed her with a livre des heures,
illuminated with all the wealth of blue and gold and divers
colors which the art of those times afforded, — a work executed
by a pupil of the celebrated Frà Angelico; and the
possession of this treasure was regarded by her as a far
richer inheritance than that princely state of which she knew
nothing. Her neat little cell had a window that looked
down on the sea, — on Capri, with its fantastic grottos, — on
Vesuvius, with its weird daily and nightly changes. The
light that came in from the joint reflection of sea and sky
gave a golden and picturesque coloring to the simple and
bare furniture, and in sunny weather she often sat there, just
as a lizard lies upon a wall, with the simple, warm, delightful
sense of living and being amid scenes of so much beauty.
Of the life that people lived in the outer world, the

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struggle, the hope, the fear, the vivid joy, the bitter sorrow,
Sister Theresa knew nothing. She could form no judgment
and give no advice founded on any such experience.

The only life she knew was a certain ideal one, drawn
from the legends of the saints; and her piety was a calm,
pure enthusiasm which had never been disturbed by a temptation
or a struggle. Her rule in the Convent was even and
serene; but those who came to her flock from the real
world, from the trials and temptations of a real experience,
were always enigmas to her, and she could scarcely comprehend
or aid them.

In fact, since in the cloister, as everywhere else, character
will find its level, it was old Jocunda who was the real governess
of the Convent. Jocunda was originally a peasant
woman, whose husband had been drafted to some of the wars
of his betters, and she had followed his fortunes in the camp.
In the sack of a fortress, she lost her husband and four sons,
all the children she had, and herself received an injury which
distorted her form, and so she took refuge in the Convent.
Here her energy and savoir-faire rendered her indispensable
in every department. She made the bargains, bought
the provisions, (being allowed to sally forth for these purposes,)
and formed the medium by which the timid, abstract,
defenceless nuns accomplished those material relations with
the world with which the utmost saintliness cannot afford to
dispense. Besides and above all this, Jocunda's wide experience
and endless capabilities of narrative made her an
invaluable resource for enlivening any dull hours that might
be upon the hands of the sisterhood; and all these recommendations,
together with a strong mother-wit and native
sense, soon made her so much the leading spirit in the

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Convent that Mother Theresa herself might be said to be under
her dominion.

“So, so,” she said to Agnes, when she had closed the gate
after Elsie, — “you never come empty-handed. What
lovely oranges! — worth double any that one can buy of
anybody else but your grandmother.”

“Yes, and these flowers I brought to dress the altar.”

“Ah, yes! Saint Agnes has given you a particular grace
for that,” said Jocunda.

“And I have brought a ring for her treasury,” said Agnes,
taking out the gift of the Cavalier.

“Holy Mother! here is something, to be sure!” said
Jocunda, catching it eagerly. “Why, Agnes, this is a diamond, —
and as pretty a one as ever I saw. How it shines!”
she added, holding it up. “That's a prince's present. How
did you get it?”

“I want to tell our mother about it,” said Agnes.

“You do?” said Jocunda. “You 'd better tell me. I
know fifty times as much about such things as she.”

“Dear Jocunda, I will tell you, too; but I love Mother
Theresa, and I ought to give it to her first.”

“As you please, then,” said Jocunda. “Well, put your
flowers here by the fountain, where the spray will keep them
cool, and we will go to her.”

p699-073 CHAPTER VII. THE DAY AT THE CONVENT.

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The Mother Theresa sat in a sort of withdrawing-room,
the roof of which rose in arches, starred with blue and gold
like that of the cloister, and the sides were frescoed with
scenes from the life of the Virgin. Over every door, and
in convenient places between the paintings, texts of Holy
Writ were illuminated in blue and scarlet and gold, with a
richness and fancifulness of outline, as if every sacred letter
had blossomed into a mystical flower. The Abbess herself,
with two of her nuns, was busily embroidering a new altar-cloth,
with a lavish profusion of adornment; and, from time
to time, their voices rose in the musical tones of an ancient
Latin hymn. The words were full of that quaint and mystical
pietism with which the fashion of the times clothed the
expression of devotional feeling: —


“Jesu, corona virginum,
Quem mater illa concepit,
Quæ sola virgo parturit,
Hæc vota clemens accipe.
“Qui pascis inter lilia
Septus choreis virginum,
Sponsus decoris gloria
Sponsisque reddens præmia.
“Quocunque pergis, virgines
Sequuntur atque laudibus

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Post te canentes cursitant
Hymnosque dulces personant.”*
This little canticle was, in truth, very different from the
hymns to Venus which used to resound in the temple which
the convent had displaced. The voices which sung were of
a deep, plaintive contralto, much resembling the richness of
a tenor, and as they moved in modulated waves of chanting
sound the effect was soothing and dreamy. Agnes stopped
at the door to listen.

“Stop, dear Jocunda,” she said to the old woman, who was
about to push her way abruptly into the room, “wait till it
is over.”

Jocunda, who was quite matter-of-fact in her ideas of religion,
made a little movement of impatience, but was recalled
to herself by observing the devout absorption with which
Agnes, with clasped hands and downcast head, was mentally
joining in the hymn with a solemn brightness in her young
face.

“If she has n't got a vocation, nobody ever had one,” said
Jocunda, mentally. “Deary me, I wish I had more of one
myself!”

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When the strain died away, and was succeeded by a conversation
on the respective merits of two kinds of gold embroidering-thread,
Agnes and Jocunda entered the apartment.
Agnes went forward and kissed the hand of the Mother
reverentially.

Sister Theresa we have before described as tall, pale, and
sad-eyed, — a moonlight style of person, wanting in all
those elements of warm color and physical solidity which
give the impression of a real vital human existence. The
strongest affection she had ever known had been that which
had been excited by the childish beauty and graces of Agnes,
and she folded her in her arms and kissed her forehead
with a warmth that had in it the semblance of maternity.

“Grandmamma has given me a day to spend with you,
dear mother,” said Agnes.

“Welcome, dear little child!” said Mother Theresa.
“Your spiritual home always stands open to you.”

“I have something to speak to you of in particular, my
mother,” said Agnes, blushing deeply.

“Indeed!” said the Mother Theresa, a slight movement
of curiosity arising in her mind as she signed to the two
nuns to leave the apartment.

“My mother,” said Agnes, “yesterday evening, as grandmamma
and I were sitting at the gate, selling oranges, a
young cavalier came up and bought oranges of me, and he
kissed my forehead and asked me to pray for him, and gave
me this ring for the shrine of Saint Agnes.”

“Kissed your forehead!” said Jocunda, “here 's a pretty
go! it is n't like you, Agnes, to let him.”

“He did it before I knew,” said Agnes. “Grandmamma
reproved him, and then he seemed to repent, and gave this
ring for the shrine of Saint Agnes.”

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“And a pretty one it is, too,” said Jocunda. “We have n't
a prettier in all our treasury. Not even the great emerald
the Queen gave is better in its way than this.”

“And he asked you to pray for him?” said Mother Theresa.

“Yes, mother dear; he looked right into my eyes and
made me look into his, and made me promise; — and I knew
that holy virgins never refused their prayers to any one that
asked, and so I followed their example.”

“I 'll warrant me he was only mocking at you for a poor
little fool,” said Jocunda; “the gallants of our day don't believe
much in prayers.”

“Perhaps so, Jocunda,” said Agnes, gravely; “but if that
be the case, he needs prayers all the more.”

“Yes,” said Mother Theresa. “Remember the story of
the blessed Saint Dorothea, — how a wicked young nobleman
mocked at her, when she was going to execution, and
said, `Dorothea, Dorothea, I will believe, when you shall
send me down some of the fruits and flowers of Paradise;'
and she, full of faith, said, `To-day I will send them;' and,
wonderful to tell, that very day, at evening, an angel came
to the young man with a basket of citrons and roses, and
said, `Dorothea sends thee these, wherefore believe.' See
what grace a pure maiden can bring to a thoughtless young
man, — for this young man was converted and became a
champion of the faith.”

“That was in the old times,” said Jocunda, sceptically.
“I don't believe setting the lamb to pray for the wolf will do
much in our day. Prithee, child, what manner of man was
this gallant?”

“He was beautiful as an angel,” said Agnes, “only it was
not a good beauty. He looked proud and sad, both, — like

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one who is not at ease in his heart. Indeed, I feel very
sorry for him; his eyes made a kind of trouble in my mind,
that reminds me to pray for him often.”

“And I will join my prayers to yours, dear daughter,”
said the Mother Theresa; “I long to have you with us, that
we may pray together every day; — say, do you think your
grandmamma will spare you to us wholly before long?”

“Grandmamma will not hear of it yet,” said Agnes; “and
she loves me so, it would break her heart, if I should leave
her, and she could not be happy here; — but, mother, you
have told me we could carry an altar always in our hearts,
and adore in secret. When it is God's will I should come
to you, He will incline her heart.”

“Between you and me, little one,” said Jocunda, “I think
there will soon be a third person who will have something
to say in the case.”

“Whom do you mean?” said Agnes.

“A husband,” said Jocunda; “I suppose your grandmother
has one picked out for you. You are neither
hump-backed nor cross-eyed, that you should n't have one
as well as other girls.”

“I don't want one, Jocunda; and I have promised to
Saint Agnes to come here, if she will only get grandmother
to consent.”

“Bless you, my daughter!” said Mother Theresa; “only
persevere and the way will be opened.”

“Well, well,” said Jocunda, “we 'll see. Come, little one,
if you would n't have your flowers wilt, we must go back
and look after them.”

Reverently kissing the hand of the Abbess, Agnes withdrew
with her old friend, and crossed again to the garden to
attend to her flowers.

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