CHAPTER VII
THE DAY AT THE CONVENT
The Mother Theresa sat in a sort of withdrawing-room, the roof of whichrose 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, textsof Holy Writ were illuminated in blue and scarlet and gold, with arichness and fancifulness of outline, as if every sacred letter hadblossomed into a mystical flower. The Abbess herself, with two ofher nuns, was busily embroidering a new altar-cloth, with a lavishprofusion of adornment; and, from time to time, their voices rose inthe musical tones of an ancient Latin hymn. The words were full of thatquaint and mystical pietism with which the fashion of the times clothedthe expression of devotional feeling:--
"Jesu, corona virginum, Quem mater illa concepit, Quae sola virgo parturit, Haec vota clemens accipe.
"Qui pascis inter lilia Septus choreis virginum, Sponsus decoris gloria Sponsisque reddens praemia.
"Quocunque pergis, virgines Sequuntur atque laudibus Post te canentes cursitant Hymnosque dulces personant."[1]
[1] "Jesus, crown of virgin spirits, Whom a virgin mother bore, Graciously accept our praises While thy footsteps we adore.
"Thee among the lilies feeding Choirs of virgins walk beside, Bridegroom crowned with glorious beauty Giving beauty to thy bride.
"Where thou goest still they follow Singing, singing as they move, All those souls forever virgin Wedded only to thy love."
This little canticle was, in truth, very different from the hymnsto Venus which used to resound in the temple which the convent haddisplaced. The voices which sung were of a deep, plaintive contralto,much resembling the richness of a tenor, and as they moved in modulatedwaves of chanting sound, the effect was soothing and dreamy. Agnesstopped at the door to listen.
"Stop, dear Jocunda," she said to the old woman, who was about to pushher way abruptly into the room, "wait till it is over."
Jocunda, who was quite matter-of-fact in her ideas of religion, made alittle movement of impatience, but was recalled to herself by observingthe devout absorption with which Agnes, with clasped hands and downcasthead, was mentally joining in the hymn with a solemn brightness in heryoung face.
"If she hasn't got a vocation, nobody ever had one," said Jocunda,mentally. "Deary me, I wish I had more of one myself!"
When the strain died away, and was succeeded by a conversation on therespective merits of two kinds of gold embroidering thread, Agnes andJocunda entered the apartment. Agnes went forward and kissed the handof the Mother reverentially.
Sister Theresa we have before described as tall, pale, and sad-eyed,--amoonlight style of person, wanting in all those elements of warm colorand physical solidity which give the impression of a real vital humanexistence. The strongest affection she had ever known had been thatwhich had been excited by the childish beauty and graces of Agnes, andshe folded her in her arms and kissed her forehead with a warmth thathad in it the semblance of maternity.
"Grandmamma has given me a day to spend with you, dear mother," saidAgnes.
"Welcome, dear little child!" said Mother Theresa. "Your spiritual homealways stands open to you."
"I have something to speak to you of in particular, my mother," saidAgnes, blushing deeply.
"Indeed!" said the Mother Theresa, a slight movement of curiosityarising in her mind as she signed to the two nuns to leave theapartment.
"My mother," said Agnes, "yesterday evening, as grandmamma and I weresitting at the gate, selling oranges, a young cavalier came up andbought oranges of me, and he kissed my forehead and asked me to prayfor him, and gave me this ring for the shrine of Saint Agnes."
"Kissed your forehead!" said Jocunda, "here's a pretty go! it isn'tlike you, Agnes, to let him."
"He did it before I knew," said Agnes. "Grandmamma reproved him, andthen he seemed to repent, and gave this ring for the shrine of SaintAgnes."
"And a pretty one it is, too," said Jocunda. "We haven't a prettier inall our treasury. Not even the great emerald the Queen gave is betterin 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 intohis, and made me promise; and I knew that holy virgins never refusedtheir 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 SaintDorothea,--how a wicked young nobleman mocked at her, when she wasgoing to execution, and said, 'Dorothea, Dorothea, I will believe, whenyou shall send me down some of the fruits and flowers of Paradise;' andshe, full of faith, said, 'To-day I will send them;' and, wonderfulto tell, that very day, at evening, an angel came to the young manwith a basket of citrons and roses, and said, 'Dorothea sends theethese, wherefore believe.' See what grace a pure maiden can bring to athoughtless young man,--for this young man was converted and became achampion of the faith."
"That was in the old times," said Jocunda, skeptically. "I don'tbelieve 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 goodbeauty. He looked proud and sad, both,--like one who is not at ease inhis heart. Indeed, I feel very sorry for him; his eyes made a kind oftrouble in my mind that reminds me to pray for him often."
"And I will join my prayers to yours, dear daughter," said the MotherTheresa; "I long to have you with us, that we may pray together everyday; say, do you think your grandmamma will spare you to us whollybefore long?"
"Grandmamma will not hear of it yet," said Agnes; "and she loves meso, it would break her heart, if I should leave her, and she could notbe happy here; but, mother, you have told me we could carry an altaralways in our hearts, and adore in secret. When it is God's will Ishould come to you, He will incline her heart."
"Between you and me, little one," said Jocunda, "I think there willsoon 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 pickedout for you. You are neither humpbacked nor cross-eyed, that youshouldn't have one as well as other girls."
"I don't want one, Jocunda; and I have promised to Saint Agnes to comehere, if she will only get grandmother to consent."
"Bless you, my daughter!" said Mother Theresa; "only persevere and theway will be opened."
"Well, well," said Jocunda, "we'll see. Come, little one, if youwouldn't have your flowers wilt, we must go back and look after them."
Reverently kissing the hand of the Abbess, Agnes withdrew with her oldfriend, and crossed again to the garden to attend to her flowers.
"Well now, childie," said Jocunda, "you can sit here and weave yourgarlands, while I go and look after the conserves of raisins andcitrons that Sister Cattarina is making. She is stupid at anything buther prayers, is Cattarina. Our Lady be gracious to me! I think I gotmy vocation from Saint Martha, and if it wasn't for me, I don't knowwhat would become of things in the Convent. Why, since I came here, ourconserves, done up in fig-leaf packages, have had quite a run at Court,and our gracious Queen herself was good enough to send an order fora hundred of them last week. I could have laughed to see how puzzledthe Mother Theresa looked; much she knows about conserves! I supposeshe thinks Gabriel brings them straight down from Paradise, done upin leaves of the tree of life. Old Jocunda knows what goes to theirmaking up; she's good for something, if she is old an
d twisted; many ascrubby old olive bears fat berries," said the old portress, chuckling.
"Oh, dear Jocunda," said Agnes, "why must you go this minute? I want totalk with you about so many things!"
"Bless the sweet child! it does want its old Jocunda, does it?" saidthe old woman, in the tone with which one caresses a baby. "Well, well,it should then! Just wait a minute, till I go and see that our holySaint Cattarina hasn't fallen a-praying over the conserving-pan. I'llbe back in a moment."
So saying, she hobbled off briskly, and Agnes, sitting down on thefragment sculptured with dancing nymphs, began abstractedly pulling herflowers towards her, shaking from them the dew of the fountain.
Unconsciously to herself, as she sat there, her head drooped intothe attitude of the marble nymph, and her sweet features assumed thesame expression of plaintive and dreamy thoughtfulness; her heavydark lashes lay on her pure waxen cheeks like the dark fringe of sometropical flower. Her form, in its drooping outlines, scarcely yetshowed the full development of womanhood, which after-years mightunfold into the ripe fullness of her country-women. Her whole attitudeand manner were those of an exquisitely sensitive and highly organizedbeing, just struggling into the life of some mysterious new innerbirth,--into the sense of powers of feeling and being hitherto unknowneven to herself.
"Ah," she softly sighed to herself, "how little I am! how little I cando! Could I convert one soul! Ah, holy Dorothea, send down the roses ofheaven into his soul, that he also may believe!"
"Well, my little beauty, you have not finished even one garland," saidthe voice of old Jocunda, bustling up behind her. "Praise to SaintMartha, the conserves are doing well, and so I catch a minute for mylittle heart."
So saying, she sat down with her spindle and flax by Agnes, for anafternoon gossip.
"Dear Jocunda, I have heard you tell stories about spirits that hauntlonesome places. Did you ever hear about any in the gorge?"
"Why, bless the child, yes,--spirits are always pacing up and down inlonely places. Father Anselmo told me that; and he had seen a priestonce that had seen that in the Holy Scriptures themselves,--so it mustbe true."
"Well, did you ever hear of their making the most beautiful music?"
"Haven't I?" said Jocunda,--"to be sure I have,--singing enough to drawthe very heart out of your body,--it's an old trick they have. Why, Iwant to know if you never heard about the King of Amalfi's son cominghome from fighting for the Holy Sepulchre? Why, there's rocks not farout from this very town where the Sirens live; and if the King's sonhadn't had a holy bishop on board, who slept every night with a pieceof the true cross under his pillow, the green ladies would have sunghim straight into perdition. They are very fair-spoken at first, andsing so that a man gets perfectly drunk with their music, and longs tofly to them; but they suck him down at last under water, and stranglehim, and that's the end of him."
"You never told me about this before, Jocunda."
"Haven't I, child? Well, I will now. You see, this good bishop, hedreamed three times that they would sail past these rocks, and he wastold to give all the sailors holy wax from an altar-candle to stoptheir ears, so that they shouldn't hear the music. Well, the King's sonsaid he wanted to hear the music, so he wouldn't have his ears stopped;but he told 'em to tie him to the mast, so that he could hear it, butnot to mind a word he said, if he begged 'em ever so hard to untie him.
"Well, you see they did it; and the old bishop, he had his ears sealedup tight, and so did all the men; but the young man stood tied to themast, and when they sailed past he was like a demented creature. Hecalled out that it was his lady who was singing, and he wanted to go toher,--and his mother, who they all knew was a blessed saint in paradiseyears before; and he commanded them to untie him, and pulled andstrained on his cords to get free; but they only tied him the tighter,and so they got him past,--for, thanks to the holy wax, the sailorsnever heard a word, and so they kept their senses. So they all got safehome; but the young prince was so sick and pining that he had to beexorcised and prayed for seven times seven days before they could getthe music out of his head."
"Why," said Agnes, "do those Sirens sing there yet?"
"Well, that was a hundred years ago. They say the old bishop, he prayed'em down; for he went out a little after on purpose, and gave 'em aprecious lot of holy water; most likely he got 'em pretty well under,though my husband's brother says he's heard 'em singing in a small way,like frogs in springtime; but he gave 'em a pretty wide berth. Yousee, these spirits are what's left of old heathen times, when, Lordbless us! the earth was just as full of 'em as a bit of old cheeseis of mites. Now a Christian body, if they take reasonable care, canwalk quit of 'em; and if they have any haunts in lonesome and dolefulplaces, if one puts up a cross or a shrine, they know they have to go."
"I am thinking," said Agnes, "it would be a blessed work to put up someshrines to Saint Agnes and our good Lord in the gorge, and I'll promiseto keep the lamps burning and the flowers in order."
"Bless the child!" said Jocunda, "that is a pious and Christianthought."
"I have an uncle in Florence who is a father in the holy convent of SanMarco, who paints and works in stone,--not for money, but for the gloryof God; and when he comes this way I will speak to him about it," saidAgnes. "About this time in the spring he always visits us."
"That's mighty well thought of," said Jocunda. "And now, tell me,little lamb, have you any idea who this grand cavalier may be that gaveyou the ring?"
"No," said Agnes, pausing a moment over the garland of flowers she wasweaving,--"only Giulietta told me that he was brother to the King.Giulietta said everybody knew him."
"I'm not so sure of that," said Jocunda. "Giulietta always thinks sheknows more than she does."
"Whatever he may be, his worldly state is nothing to me," said Agnes."I know him only in my prayers."
"Ay, ay," muttered the old woman to herself, looking obliquely out ofthe corner of her eye at the girl, who was busily sorting her flowers;"perhaps he will be seeking some other acquaintance."
"You haven't seen him since?" said Jocunda.
"Seen him? Why, dear Jocunda, it was only last evening"--
"True enough. Well, child, don't think too much of him. Men aredreadful creatures,--in these times especially; they snap up a prettygirl as a fox does a chicken, and no questions asked."
"I don't think he looked wicked, Jocunda; he had a proud, sorrowfullook. I don't know what could make a rich, handsome young mansorrowful; but I feel in my heart that he is not happy. Mother Theresasays that those who can do nothing but pray may convert princes withoutknowing it."
"Maybe it is so," said Jocunda, in the same tone in which thriftyprofessors of religion often assent to the same sort of truths in ourdays. "I've seen a good deal of that sort of cattle in my day; and onewould think, by their actions, that praying souls must be scarce wherethey came from."
Agnes abstractedly stooped and began plucking handfuls of lycopodium,which was growing green and feathery on one side of the marble friezeon which she was sitting; in so doing, a fragment of white marble,which had been overgrown in the luxuriant green, appeared to view. Itwas that frequent object in the Italian soil,--a portion of an oldRoman tombstone. Agnes bent over, intent on the mystic "_Dis Manibus_,"in old Roman letters.
"Lord bless the child! I've seen thousands of them," said Jocunda;"it's some old heathen's grave, that's been in hell these hundredyears."
"In hell?" said Agnes, with a distressful accent.
"Of course," said Jocunda. "Where should they be? Serves 'em right,too; they were a vile old set."
"Oh, Jocunda, it's dreadful to think of, that they should have been inhell all this time."
"And no nearer the end than when they began," said Jocunda.
Agnes gave a shivering sigh, and, looking up into the golden sky thatwas pouring such floods of splendor through the orange trees andjasmines, thought, How could it be that the world could possibly begoing on so sweet and fair over such an abyss?
&
nbsp; "Oh, Jocunda!" she said, "it does seem too dreadful to believe! Howcould they help being heathen,--being born so,--and never hearing ofthe true Church?"
"Sure enough," said Jocunda, spinning away energetically, "but that'sno business of mine; my business is to save _my_ soul, and that's whatI came here for. The dear saints know I found it dull enough at first,for I'd been used to jaunting round with my old man and the boy; butwhat with marketing and preserving, and one thing and another, I get onbetter now, praise to Saint Agnes!"
The large, dark eyes of Agnes were fixed abstractedly on the old womanas she spoke, slowly dilating, with a sad, mysterious expression, whichsometimes came over them.
"Ah! how can the saints themselves be happy?" she said. "One might bewilling to wear sackcloth and sleep on the ground, one might sufferever so many years and years, if only one might save some of them."
"Well, it does seem hard," said Jocunda; "but what's the use ofthinking of it? Old Father Anselmo told us in one of his sermons thatthe Lord wills that his saints should come to rejoice in the punishmentof all heathens and heretics; and he told us about a great saint once,who took it into his head to be distressed because one of the oldheathen whose books he was fond of reading had gone to hell,--and hefasted and prayed, and wouldn't take no for an answer, till he got himout."
"He did, then?" said Agnes, clasping her hands in an ecstasy.
"Yes; but the good Lord told him never to try it again,--and He struckhim dumb, as a kind of hint, you know. Why, Father Anselmo said thateven getting souls out of purgatory was no easy matter. He told us ofone holy nun who spent nine years fasting and praying for the soul ofher prince, who was killed in a duel, and then she saw in a visionthat he was only raised the least little bit out of the fire,--and sheoffered up her life as a sacrifice to the Lord to deliver him, but,after all, when she died he wasn't quite delivered. Such things mademe think that a poor old sinner like me would never get out at all, ifI didn't set about it in earnest,--though it ain't all nuns that savetheir souls either. I remember in Pisa I saw a great picture of theJudgment Day in the Campo Santo, and there were lots of abbesses, andnuns, and monks, and bishops, too, that the devils were clearing offinto the fire."
"Oh, Jocunda, how dreadful that fire must be!"
"Yes," said Jocunda. "Father Anselmo said hell-fire wasn't like anykind of fire we have here,--made to warm us and cook our food,--buta kind made especially to torment body and soul, and not made foranything else. I remember a story he told us about that. You see, therewas an old duchess that lived in a grand old castle,--and a proud,wicked old thing enough; and her son brought home a handsome youngbride to the castle, and the old duchess was jealous of her,--'cause,you see, she hated to give up her place in the house, and the oldfamily jewels, and all the splendid things,--and so one time, when thepoor young thing was all dressed up in a set of the old family lace,what does the old hag do but set fire to it!"
"How horrible!" said Agnes.
"Yes; and when the young thing ran screaming in her agony, the old hagstopped her and tore off a pearl rosary that she was wearing, for fearit should be spoiled by the fire."
"Holy Mother! can such things be possible?" said Agnes.
"Well, you see, she got her pay for it. That rosary was of famous oldpearls that had been in the family a hundred years; but from thatmoment the good Lord struck it with a curse, and filled it white-hotwith hell-fire, so that if anybody held it a few minutes in their hand,it would burn to the bone. The old sinner made believe that she wasin great affliction for the death of her daughter-in-law, and thatit was all an accident, and the poor young man went raving mad,--butthat awful rosary the old hag couldn't get rid of. She couldn't giveit away,--she couldn't sell it,--but back it would come every night,and lie right over her heart, all white-hot with the fire that burnedin it. She gave it to a convent, and she sold it to a merchant, butback it came; and she locked it up in the heaviest chests, and sheburied it down in the lowest vaults, but it always came back in thenight, till she was worn to a skeleton; and at last the old thing diedwithout confession or sacrament, and went where she belonged. She wasfound lying dead in her bed one morning, and the rosary was gone; butwhen they came to lay her out, they found the marks of it burned to thebone into her breast. Father Anselmo used to tell us this, to show us alittle what hell-fire was like."
"Oh, please, Jocunda, don't let us talk about it any more," said Agnes.
Old Jocunda, with her tough, vigorous organization and unceremonioushabits of expression, could not conceive the exquisite pain with whichthis whole conversation had vibrated on the sensitive being at herright hand,--that what merely awoke her hard-corded nerves to a dullvibration of not unpleasant excitement was shivering and tearing thetenderer chords of poor little Psyche beside her.
Ages before, beneath those very skies that smiled so sweetly overher,--amid the bloom of lemon and citron, and the perfume of jasmineand rose, the gentlest of old Italian souls had dreamed and wonderedwhat might be the unknown future of the dead, and, learning his lessonfrom the glorious skies and gorgeous shores which witnessed howmagnificent a Being had given existence to man, had recorded his hopesof man's future in the words--_Aut beatus, aut nihil_; but, singularto tell, the religion which brought with it all human tenderness andpities,--the hospital for the sick, the refuge for the orphan, theenfranchisement of the slave,--this religion brought also the newsof the eternal, hopeless, living torture of the great majority ofmankind, past and present. Tender spirits, like those of Dante, carriedthis awful mystery as a secret and unexplained anguish, saints wrestledwith God and wept over it; but still the awful fact remained, spite ofChurch and sacrament, that the gospel was in effect, to the majority ofthe human race, not the glad tidings of salvation, but the sentence ofunmitigable doom.
The present traveler in Italy sees with disgust the dim and fadedfrescoes in which this doom is portrayed in all its varied refinementsof torture; and the vivid Italian mind ran riot in these lurid fields,and every monk who wanted to move his audience was in his small way aDante. The poet and the artist give only the highest form of the ideasof their day, and he who cannot read the "Inferno" with firm nerves mayask what the same representations were likely to have been in the graspof coarse and common minds.
The first teachers of Christianity in Italy read the Gospels by thelight of those fiendish fires which consumed their fellows. Daily madefamiliar with the scorching, the searing, the racking, the devilishingenuities of torture, they transferred them to the future hell ofthe torturers. The sentiment within us which asserts eternal justiceand retribution was stimulated to a kind of madness by that firstbaptism of fire and blood, and expanded the simple and grave warningsof the gospel into a lurid poetry of physical torture. Hence, whileChristianity brought multiplied forms of mercy into the world, itfailed for many centuries to humanize the savage forms of justice; andrack and wheel, fire and fagot were the modes by which human justiceaspired to a faint imitation of what divine justice was supposed toextend through eternity.
But it is remarkable always to observe the power of individual mindsto draw out of the popular religious ideas of their country only thoseelements which suit themselves, and to drop others from their thought.As a bee can extract pure honey from the blossoms of some plants whoseleaves are poisonous, so some souls can nourish themselves only withthe holier and more ethereal parts of popular belief.
Agnes had hitherto dwelt only on the cheering and the joyous featuresof her faith; her mind loved to muse on the legends of saints andangels and the glories of paradise, which, with a secret buoyancy,she hoped to be the lot of every one she saw. The mind of the MotherTheresa was of the same elevated cast, and the terrors on which Jocundadwelt with such homely force of language seldom made a part of herinstructions.
Agnes tried to dismiss these gloomy images from her mind, and, afterarranging her garlands, went to decorate the shrine and altar,--acheerful labor of love, in which she delighted.
To the mind of the really spir
itual Christian of those ages the air ofthis lower world was not as it is to us, in spite of our nominal faithin the Bible, a blank, empty space from which all spiritual sympathyand life have fled, but, like the atmosphere with which Raphael hassurrounded the Sistine Madonna, it was full of sympathizing faces, agreat "cloud of witnesses." The holy dead were not gone from earth;the Church visible and invisible were in close, loving, and constantsympathy,--still loving, praying, and watching together, though with aveil between.
It was at first with no idolatrous intention that the prayers of theholy dead were invoked in acts of worship. Their prayers were askedsimply because they were felt to be as really present with their formerfriends and as truly sympathetic as if no veil of silence had fallenbetween. In time this simple belief had its intemperate and idolatrousexaggerations,--the Italian soil always seeming to have a fieryand volcanic forcing power, by which religious ideas overblossomedthemselves, and grew wild and ragged with too much enthusiasm; and,as so often happens with friends on earth, these too much lovedand revered invisible friends became eclipsing screens instead oftransmitting mediums of God's light to the soul.
Yet we can see in the hymns of Savonarola, who perfectly representedthe attitude of the highest Christian of those times, how perfectmight be the love and veneration for departed saints without lapsinginto idolatry, and with what an atmosphere of warmth and glory thetrue belief of the unity of the Church, visible and invisible, couldinspire an elevated soul amid the discouragements of an unbelieving andgainsaying world.
Our little Agnes, therefore, when she had spread all her garlands out,seemed really to feel as if the girlish figure that smiled in sacredwhite from the altar-piece was a dear friend who smiled upon her, andwas watching to lead her up the path to heaven.
Pleasantly passed the hours of that day to the girl, and when atevening old Elsie called for her, she wondered that the day had gone sofast.
Old Elsie returned with no inconsiderable triumph from her stand. Thecavalier had been several times during the day past her stall, andonce, stopping in a careless way to buy fruit, commented on the absenceof her young charge. This gave Elsie the highest possible idea of herown sagacity and shrewdness, and of the promptitude with which shehad taken her measures, so that she was in as good spirits as peoplecommonly are who think they have performed some stroke of generalship.
As the old woman and young girl emerged from the dark-vaulted passagethat led them down through the rocks on which the convent stood to thesea at its base, the light of a most glorious sunset burst upon them,in all those strange and magical mysteries of light which any one whohas walked that beach of Sorrento at evening will never forget.
Agnes ran along the shore, and amused herself with picking up littlemorsels of red and black coral, and those fragments of mosaicpavements, blue, red, and green, which the sea is never tired ofcasting up from the thousands of ancient temples and palaces which havegone to wreck all around these shores.
As she was busy doing this, she suddenly heard the voice of Giuliettabehind her.
"So ho, Agnes! where have you been all day?"
"At the Convent," said Agnes, raising herself from her work, andsmiling at Giulietta, in her frank, open way.
"Oh, then you really did take the ring to Saint Agnes?"
"To be sure I did," said Agnes.
"Simple child!" said Giulietta, laughing; "that wasn't what he meantyou to do with it. He meant it for you,--only your grandmother was by.You never will have any lovers, if she keeps you so tight."
"I can do without," said Agnes.
"I could tell you something about this one," said Giulietta.
"You did tell me something yesterday," said Agnes.
"But I could tell you some more. I know he wants to see you again."
"What for?" said Agnes.
"Simpleton, he's in love with you. You never had a lover; it's time youhad."
"I don't want one, Giulietta. I hope I never shall see him again."
"Oh, nonsense, Agnes! Why, what a girl you are! Why, before I was asold as you, I had half-a-dozen lovers."
"Agnes," said the sharp voice of Elsie, coming up from behind, "don'trun on ahead of me again; and you, Mistress Baggage, let my childalone."
"Who's touching your child?" said Giulietta, scornfully. "Can't a bodysay a civil word to her?"
"I know what you would be after," said Elsie, "filling her head withtalk of all the wild, loose gallants; but she is for no such market, Ipromise you! Come, Agnes."
So saying, old Elsie drew Agnes rapidly along with her, leavingGiulietta rolling her great black eyes after them with an air ofinfinite contempt.
"The old kite!" she said; "I declare he shall get speech of the littledove, if only to spite her. Let her try her best, and see if we don'tget round her before she knows it. Pietro says his master is certainlywild after her, and I have promised to help him."
Meanwhile, just as old Elsie and Agnes were turning into the orangeorchard which led into the Gorge of Sorrento, they met the cavalier ofthe evening before.
He stopped, and, removing his cap, saluted them with as much deferenceas if they had been princesses. Old Elsie frowned, and Agnes blusheddeeply; both hurried forward. Looking back, the old woman saw that hewas walking slowly behind them, evidently watching them closely, yetnot in a way sufficiently obtrusive to warrant an open rebuff.