“Ah, Jocunda, seems to me it were better to trust to the free love of our dear Lord who died for us, and pray to Him, without ceasing, for his soul.”
“Like enough, dearie; but then, one can’t he too sure, you know. And there isn’t the least doubt in my mind that that was a true relic, for I got it in the sack of the city of Volterra, out of the private cabinet of a noble lady, with a lot of jewels and other matters that made quite a little purse for us. Ah, that was a time, when that city was sacked! It was hell upon earth for three days, and all our men acted like devils incarnate; but then they always will in such cases. But go your ways now, dearie, and I’ll stay with your grandmamma; for, please God, you must be up and away with the sun tomorrow.”
Agnes hastily arranged a little basket of fruit and flowers, and took her way down through the gorge, under the Roman bridge, through an orange-orchard, and finally came out upon the sea-shore, and so along the sands below the cliffs on which the old town of Sorrento is situated.
So cheating and inconsistent is the human heart, especially in the feminine subject, that she had more than once occasion to chide herself for the thrill with which she remembered passing the Cavalier once in this orange-garden, and the sort of vague hope which she detected that somewhere along this road he might appear again.
“How perfectly wicked and depraved I must be,” she said to herself, “to find any pleasure in such a thought of one I should pray never to meet again!”
And so the little soul went on condemning herself in those exaggerated terms which the religious vocabulary of conventual life furnished ready-made for the use of penitents of every degree, till by the time she arrived at the Convent she could scarcely have been more oppressed with a sense of sin, if she had murdered her grandmother and eloped with the Cavalier.
On her arrival in the Convent court, the peaceful and dreamy stillness contrasted strangely with the gorgeous brightness of the day outside. The splendid sunshine, the sparkling sea, the songs of the boatmen, the brisk passage of gliding sails, the bright hues of the flowers that garlanded the rocks, all seemed as if the earth had been arrayed for some gala-day; but the moment she had passed the portal, the silent, mossy court, with its pale marble nymph, its lull of falling water, its turf snow-dropt with daisies and fragrant with blue and white violets, and the surrounding cloistered walks, with their pictured figures of pious history, all came with a sad and soothing influence on her nerves.
The nuns, who had heard the news of the projected pilgrimage, and regarded it as the commencement of that saintly career which they had always predicted for her, crowded around her, kissing her hands and her robe, and entreating her prayers at different shrines of especial sanctity that she might visit.
The Mother Theresa took her to her cell, and there hung round her neck, by a golden chain, the relic which she designed for her, and of whose genuineness she appeared to possess no manner of doubt.
“But how pale you are, my sweet child!” she said. “What has happened to alter you so much? Your cheeks look so thin, and there are deep, dark circles round your eyes.”