I--Why?
She--Because you are ill, and you must eat meat; the Pope himself ate meat when he was ill. Religion does not mean that we are to injure our health.
I--How do you know, Filomena, what Religion means?
She--From my Confessor. I had a little headache the other day, and he ordered me at once to eat meat.
I--The worst of it is that I have no Confessor and do not go to church. Shall I be damned for that?
She--Oh! no, sir, that does not follow! Do you think I am so stupid as not to see that you others are far better Christians than we? You are good; the friends who come to see you are good. The Romans, on the other hand, who go to church one day, kill people the next, and will not let go about the streets in peace.
I am quite sorry that she is to go home at Easter; I shall miss her face about the house. But I have missed more.
Late evening. They have come back from the Carnival. Filomena came in and presented me with an object the use of which is an enigma to me. A roll of silver paper. Now I see what it is, a Carnival cap. My Danish friend R. declares she has got it into her head that when I am better I shall marry her, or rather that Maria has put it into her head. I thought I would see how matters stood. I began talking to Maria about marriages with foreigners. Maria mentioned how many girls from Rome and Capri had married foreigners, but added afterwards, not without significance, addressing me: "It is not, as you believe, and as you said once before, that a girl born in a warm country would complain of being taken to a cold one. If she did, she would be stupid. But a Roman girl will not do for a foreign gentleman. The Roman girls learn too little."
Much, the lower classes certainly do not learn. Before I came, Filomena did not know what ink was. Now I have discovered that she does not know what a watch is. She reckons time by the dinner and the Ave Maria. Not long ago her uncle spent a week in trying to teach this great child to make and read figures, but without success. Not long ago she had to write to her mother in the mountains, so went to a public writer, and had it done for her. She came in to me very innocently afterwards to know whether the right name and address were upon it. I told her that she could very well have let me write the letter. Since then, all the people in the house come to me when there is anything they want written, and ask me to do it for them.
The news of my skill has spread. Apropos of letters, I have just read the four letters that I received to-day. Filomena is perpetually complaining of my sweetheart's uncontrollable passion as revealed in this writing madness. She imagines that all the letters I receive from Denmark are from one person, and that person, of course, a woman. She herself hardly receives one letter a year.