ey send missionaries to
England once or twice a-year, (there is a priest whom I know just now
returned), who bring, generally prostitutes, but women of a better order
if they can find them, put them into a convent, to train, and, when
trained, send them out to strengthen the Catholics here in their faith,
and, if possible, bring back to the fold those who have gone to
Geymonat; and highly accomplished trustworthy dames they send home to
England to bring out others, or remain there and proselytise; or they
send them here and there among the English on the Continent, sometimes
to profess one thing and sometimes another. A few weeks ago one tried
her skill upon us residing in Genoa, and partially succeeded. Her tale
was, that she was the daughter of an English clergyman, who came abroad
with her aunt, travelling in great style of course, and was put into a
convent, and kept there against her will; and now she had contrived to
make her escape, and perfectly trembled when she saw a priest, or even
heard one named; and, although of high family, was ready to teach or do
anything in an English family, to be out of reach of the priests. The
things she told were most harrowing, and some of them very true-like.
One English gentleman here thought of taking her into his family as
governess, until he should get her father to come for her. I was asked
to visit her at his house, and hear her woeful history. I went; but the
line 'Timeo Danaos,' &c., was ever forcing itself upon me as I walked
musingly along to the house, which was a little distance out of town.
While hearing her long unconnected string of falsehoods, the thing that
astonished me was, why the Roman Catholic priests should have chosen
such an ugly woman to do such a piece of work; and not only had she the
most forbidding appearance of any woman I ever saw, but she was the most
illiterate; not a single sentence came correctly from her lips, and, in
pronunciation, the letter 'h' ever was prefixed to the 'aunt' and the
'Oxford,'--the very quintescence of Cockneyism. It was clear to my mind
that she had 'done' the priests, and the sequel proves my suspicions to
be correct. That day before she left, she discovered that she was
suspected, and very prudently threw off her mask very soon after. Her
correct history we are only getting bit by bit; but all we have learned
convinces us that she has deceived the Italian priest, who knows very
little of English, by persuading him that sh