"My father and mother thanked the stranger who knew me and yet was unknown to us. They stepped into the carriage where I followed them with regret, for some unknown power irresistibly attracted me toward my savior. He remained unstirring in the same spot, as if to continue between us and harm. I looked at him as long as I could and the oppression on my bosom did not go off until he was lost to view. In a couple of hours we reached Subiaco."
"But who was this extraordinary man?" cried Princess Louise, moved by the simplicity of the story.
"Kindly let me finish. Alas! this is not the whole of it.
"On the road, we three did nothing but talk about the singular liberator who had come mysteriously and powerfully like an agent of heaven. Less credulous than me, my father suspected him to be one of those heads of the robber leagues infesting the suburbs of Rome, who have absolute authority to reward, punish and share. Though I could not argue against my father's experience, I obeyed instinct and the effect of my gratitude, and did not believe him a robber. In my prayers to the Madonna, I set aside a special one for her to bless my savior.
"That same day I entered the convent. As the money was ready, nothing prevented my reception. I was sad but more resigned than ever. A superstitious Italian, I believed that heaven had protected me from the devils to hand me over pure to the religious haven. So I yielded with eagerness to the wishes of my parents and the lady superior. A petition to be made a nun without having to go through the novitiate in the white veil was placed before me, and I signed it. My father had written it in such fervent strains that the pope must have thought the request was the ardent aspiration of a soul disgusted with the world and turning to solitude. The plea was granted and I only had to be a novice for one month. The news caused me neither joy nor displeasure. I seemed already to be dead to the world, and a corpse with simply the impassible spirit outliving it.
"They kept me immured a fortnight for fear the worldly craving would seize me, and on the fifteenth morning ordered me to go down into the chapel with the other sisters.
"In Italy, the convent chapels are public churches, the pope not believing that priests should make a private house of any place set aside for the worshippers of the Divine.
"I went into the choir and took my place. Between the green screens supposed to veil the choir in was a space through which the nave could be viewed. By this peep-crack out on the world I saw a man standing by himself among the kneeling crowd. The previous feeling of uneasiness came over me once more—the superhuman attraction to my soul to draw it forth, as I have seen my brother move iron filings on a sheet of paper by waving a magnet underneath it.
"Alas! vanquished and subjugated, with no power to withstand this attraction, I bent toward him, clasping my hands as in worship, and with lips and heart I sent him my thanks. My sisters stared at me with surprise, for they had not comprehended my words nor my movement. To follow the direction of my gesture and glance, they rose on tiptoe to peer over into the nave, and I trembled; but the stranger had disappeared. They questioned me, but I only blushed and faltered, as next I turned pale.
"From that time, madame," said Lorenza, in despair, "I have lived in the control of the devil!"