“But, marchesa——! This from you, who are such an advocate for progress!”
“Cosa volete? I do not think the warm hearts of our daughters of the south could read as phlegmatically as Englishwomen those tales in which love and courtship are ever, must ever, be predominant.”
“And if they could thereby learn to form a more exalted idea of what we tax you Italians as regarding in too common-place a light? If they were led to look upon marriage less as a worldly transaction than as a solemn compact, not to be lightly entered into, but to be lovingly and faithfully observed?”
“If, if, my dear Utopist! If, instead of all these fine results, you gave them glimpses of a liberty and privileges they could never know, and so ended by making them miserable? Take my own case for an example. I was sixteen. I had never left the convent for nine years; I was always dressed in cotton prints, of the simplest make and description, and thick leather shoes, with great soles, that clattered as I walked along the mouldy old corridors, or ran about with the other pupils in the formal alleys of the garden, of which the four frowning walls had so long constituted our horizon. My pursuits and acquirements had varied but little from what they were when I entered the convent; and to give you in one word the summary of the infantile guilelessness in which the educande were presumed to exist, I had never seen the reflection of my own face except by stealth, in a little bit of looking-glass, about the size of a visiting-card, which I had coaxed my old nurse to bring me in one of her visits, and that we smuggled through the grating of the parlatojo concealed between two slices of cake!
“I knew this was to go on till a partito was arranged for me, for my parents did not like it to be said they had an unmarried daughter at home upon their hands; besides, many men prefer a bride fresh from the seclusion of the convent, and in those days especially, this was the strict etiquette. I had seen my eldest sister discontented and fretting till she was nearly twenty, before the welcome sposo could be found, and I had no inclination to be incarcerated so long, though hope, and certain furtive glances at my mirror, kept encouraging me to look for a speedier deliverance.
“At last, one Easter Sunday—how well I remember it!—I was summoned to the parlatojo, and there, on the outer side of the grating, stood a group of my relations: my father and mother, my sister and her husband, and one or two of my aunts. I was so flurried at the sight of so many people, and so taken up with looking at the gay new Easter dresses of my visitors—my sister, I recollect, had an immense sort of high-crowned hat, with prodigious feathers, as was the fashion then, which excited my intense admiration and envy—that I had not time to bestow much notice upon a little dried-up old man who had come in with them, and who kept taking huge pinches of snuff and talking in a low tone with my father. My mother, on her side, was engaged in whispering to the Mother-Superior, and from her gestures, seemed in a very good humour; while the rest of the party drew off my attention by cramming me with sweetmeats they had brought for my Easter present.
“The next day but one, I was again sent for, and, with downcast eyes, but a bounding heart, presented myself at the grating. There I found my mother, as before, in deep conversation with the Superior, who, on my bending to kiss her hand, according to custom, saluted me on both cheeks with an unusual demonstration of tenderness.
“'Well, Gentilina,' said my mother, 'I suppose you begin to wish to come out into the world a little?'
“I knew my mother so slightly, seldom seeing her more than once a month, that I stood in great awe of her; so I dropped a deep courtesy and faltered, 'Si, signora;' but I warrant you I understood it all, and already saw myself in a hat and feathers even more voluminous than my sister's!
“'The Madre Superiore does not give you a bad character, I am glad to find.'