[1] An argument worthy to take rank beside the famous one of ‘Mrs. Brown’ concerning Noah’s Ark. [↑]
[2] I said this, really thinking at the moment there was such a statue surmounting the apex of the pediment of the façade; but it afterwards came to mind and I have since verified it on the spot, that the statues on the pediment represent the twelve Apostles with Christ in the centre, and there is no female figure there. Among the numerous statues of saints surmounting the colonnade, are a small proportion of female saints, but no one at all prominent. [↑]
GIACINTA MARESCOTTI.
There was a prince Marescotti,[1] who had two daughters, Cecilia and Giacinta. From her childhood Cecilia had always been gentle and pious, and everyone said, ‘When she grows up she will be a nun.’ Giacenta was proud, handsome, and passionate, and everyone said, ‘She will be a leader of society, and woe betide whoso offends her.’
But their father, good man,[2] knew them better, and one day he announced to them the choice of a state of life which he had made for them; for the pious, gentle Cecilia there was a great lord coming from abroad to make her his wife; but the proud, passionate Giacinta was to enter a convent.
The one was as dismayed as the other at the time, though the event showed he had chosen right. Cecilia, who loved quiet and repose, tenderly entreated her father to let her off the anxieties and responsibilities of becoming the head of a great family, while Giacinta made a great noise[3] at the idea of her beauty and talents being laid up hidden in a nun’s cell. Nevertheless, in those days long gone by, girls were used to obey.[4] Cecilia married and proved herself an exemplary wife and mother, and carried respect for religion wherever she went.
Giacinta, on the other hand, took all her worldly state into her convent with her; her cell was furnished like the drawing-room of a palace, and she insisted on having her maids to wait on her; the other nuns she scarcely spoke to, and treated as the dust under her feet.
One day the bishop came to visit the convent. ‘What a smell!’[5] he said, as he passed the cell of Giacinta Marescotti.