“No, signora; only the 'Lives of the Saints.'”
“Where was this convent?—was it near Loretto, or Jesi, or Macerata?”
“I do not know, signora.”
“You do not know!—was it very far off, then?”
“Not very, signora; it took four hours to go there from Ancona in a carriage. I remained ten years; I never went out all the time, and I returned home the same way that I went.”
During this dialogue her voice never changed in its monotonous intonation, with the unvarying “signora” at every sentence, which Italian convent girls are so remarkable for bestowing; when my uncle walked into the drawing-room with a young Oxonian, the son of a very old friend, who had unexpectedly arrived to take the steamer for Greece on an eastern tour.
We jumped up in delight and shook hands so heartily, that I fear the Contessa was quite scandalized; but for a few minutes we were too much taken up with our countryman to think of her. When calmness was restored, and she rose to take leave, I perceived, to my great amusement, that although the daughter's eyelids were drooping as before, she was busy, beneath their long lashes, in taking a survey of the handsome young stranger, although not the movement of a muscle in the smooth expressionless face was perceptible; neither did she evince any apparent consciousness of all that was going on, as, meekly following her mother, she curtseyed herself out of the room.
It is certainly extraordinary how, after this penitential discipline, the instant they are married, these demure little damsels acquire the full use of their visual organs, and bring all their latent fire into play. Indeed, the sudden transition from an awkward, silent, ill-dressed girl, such as I have described, into an elegant, self-possessed, talkative woman, is so wonderful as only to be credited by those who daily witness the metamorphosis effected in Italy by the dignity and enfranchisement of matrimony.
Persons desirous of a more extended scale of instruction for their daughters, and who are, at the same time, hostile to the Sacré Cœur, find themselves in great perplexity. The experiment has been tried by one or two families of sending them into Tuscany, where there are several institutions for female education, conducted on comparatively liberal principles; but the distance, the danger and expense of the journey, were all such serious drawbacks, that the example found few imitators. The manners of the country, and, it must be added, the incapacity of the mothers for the task, render it inexpedient to bring up girls at home; so that, after much talking and deliberation, nine fathers out of ten resign themselves to do as their fathers did before them, and deposit their daughters in the old convents, out of harm's way, for half a score of years at least.
It must be confessed, they have enough to occupy them as to the means of educating their sons, when they have the bad taste not to confide them to the Jesuits. Sometimes they send them to Pisa or Sienna in Tuscany, at which last there used to be a college of some eminence, conducted on moderate principles by the Padri Scolopj; but of late years abuses have crept in, and it has greatly degenerated. Others, again, engage an abbé or tutor, for the first few years, and then place them to complete their studies at the once celebrated university of Bologna.