One day a pretty, bashful-looking _contessina_, just emancipated from her convent, came with her mother to pay a morning visit. While the latter was engaged with poor Lucy, on whom doing the honours to the elderly ladies always devolved, I endeavoured to overcome the daughter's timidity, and draw her into conversation. Not knowing what else to speak of, I began about her recent studies, and inquired if she knew French.
“No, signora,”[3] with downcast eyes, “they did not teach that in the convent.”
“Si, signora—the nuns taught us that, and we worked a beautiful set of vestments for the priest who said Mass in our church.”
“No, signora; only the 'Lives of the Saints.'”
“Where was this convent?—was it near Loretto, or Jesi, or Macerata?”
“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.