“Never even coming home for their holidays,” remarked my uncle. “Strange that there should be people in existence who can consent to this unnecessary separation from their children for ten or eleven years. How the character may be worked upon, and all its fresh impulses destroyed, by this long period of unbroken influence!”
“But do they, then, never see their children?” I inquired.
“Oh yes, they may go and visit them,” he replied; “but an interview of but an hour or so occasionally, is a very poor substitute for more unrestrained intercourse; besides, it often happens that the convent or college is at a considerable distance, and it does not suit people to be always travelling.”
“Talking of these visits,” said the count, “reminds me of one I lately paid to Loretto, to see the eldest son of the Principe L——, a handsome, animated, and promising little fellow of nine years old, who had been placed at the Jesuits' College there about six months before. I could scarcely recognize the child. Without ill-usage, without any compulsory discipline, but simply by the steady workings of their wonderful method of compression, the boy's spirit and originality appeared to be as completely extinguished as if they had never existed. He had become grave, thoughtful beyond his age, with a little demure, bland look, that seemed a reflection of the countenances of his priestly instructors. I horrified the ecclesiastic who was present during the interview, by rather maliciously asking the child if he still continued to take as much interest as ever in all scientific and mechanical pursuits, and in reading of the recent discoveries. As the sworn upholder of a government that opposes railways, and laments the invention of printing, the priest was bound to express his surprise at the suggestion, 'My child,' said he, mildly addressing his pupil, 'is it possible you ever thought thus? You have other tastes now. Tell the signor conte what you most wish to become.' The boy coloured, cast down his eyes, and murmured, 'Un Latinista'—a Latin scholar. Anything like a love of aught relating to progression was a crime.”
There was some bitterness, but no exaggeration, in what the young Anconitan related. The question of the Jesuits is purely a political one, they being supported by the party termed by the liberals Oscurantisti or Codini—the first name signifying literally obscurers, and the last derived from the queue worn by the gentlemen of the last century, and without which, to this day, upon the Italian stage, the portrait of a prejudiced obstinate old noble is incomplete. Families of these views esteem it, therefore, a point of conscience to intrust the education of their children to this order.
The Jesuit colleges nearest Ancona are at Loretto, a distance of twenty miles; and at Fano, about thirty miles off, in an opposite direction. At the former place also, the French Dames du Sacré Cœur have a convent for young ladies, embracing much the same line of principles. It cannot be denied that, as respects general accomplishments and ladylike deportment, their pupils infinitely surpass those of all other conventual establishments in the country; but the Jesuit leaven that pervades the whole course of tuition, deters all parents, not devoted to the tenets of Loyola, from placing their daughters under their care.
The House at Loretto was admirably conducted; simplicity, cleanliness, refinement, order, were its striking features. The pupils appeared to me perfectly happy. Most of them had entered at six or seven years of age, and cherished an enthusiastic affection for the nuns, or Ladies, as they are generally styled, who by their gentle and dignified deportment, their patient study of character, and the devotion of their whole faculties to the task, acquired over them an unlimited ascendancy. A girl in the Sacré Cœur never learned to reason;—what “La Mère Supérieure” once said, was to her an article of faith,—infallible, unimpeachable. The opinions thus formed—and they designedly embraced every relation of society—were seldom or never shaken off.
In politics, as may be conceived, the Sacré Cœur is unmitigatedly Austrian. In 1848, while all Italy was applauding the prowess or lamenting the misfortunes of Charles Albert, the pupils at Loretto knew of no hero but Radetsky; and celebrated his triumph over Italian independence by a grand march for the pianoforte, composed expressly for them by their music-master, maestro di cappella to the Church of the Santa Casa.
The acquaintance possessed by these ladies with all that is passing in the outer world, down to the minutest details of inner life, is a well-known attribute of the order. Imparted to their Jesuit confessors, this knowledge has often become a powerful political engine. The means by which it is acquired is through the confidence and affection of their pupils. I once happened to be staying in the same house with a young lady who had recently left the convent. The Contessina used to write every day to the Mère Supérieure long crossed letters, in a delicate French hand. “You carry on an active correspondence,” some one remarked. “Oh, yes!” was the unsuspecting reply; “the Mère is so good! She tells us always to remember, when we leave her care, that whatever is of interest to us interests her; and to tell her of our occupations, our acquaintances; of those who come to the house, and what they speak about.”
I had also an opportunity of observing the mastery the Sacred Heart obtains over family ties and instincts. Another young girl of our acquaintance—indeed, she was one of our most intimate friends—was on the eve of entering the novitiate, when she heard that the cholera was raging at Trieste. The alarm was great in Ancona, where a belief in contagion prevailed; and it was generally anticipated that, through the constant communication going on between the Austrian garrison and that port, the epidemic would be speedily transmitted. The parents of the future novice were somewhat advanced in years, delicate in health, and apprehensive of the impending danger. She therefore wrote to the Superior, proposing to adjourn her entrance into the order till after the cholera had visited Ancona, in order to be at hand to nurse her parents if attacked. “My child,” was the reply, “leave your parents to higher care. This is clearly a temptation of the Evil One.” And accordingly she went.