hat advice do you then give me, good friend, that
may prevent the catastrophe which threatens us?"

"I will give you counsel so good," rejoined the housekeeper, "that
better could not be. I, Signora, was formerly in the service of a
priest, who has his abode in a village not more than two miles from
Ferrara. He is a good and holy man, who will do whatever I require from
him, since he is under more obligations to me than merely those of a
master to a faithful servant. Let us go to him. I will seek some one who
shall conduct us thither instantly; and the woman who comes to nurse the
infant is a poor creature, who will go with us to the end of the world.
And, now make ready, Signora; for supposing you are to be discovered, it
would be much better that you should be found under the care of a good
priest, old and respected, than in the hands of two young students,
bachelors and Spaniards, who, as I can myself bear witness, are but
little disposed to lose occasions for amusing themselves. Now that you
are unwell, they treat you with respect; but if you get well and remain
in their clutches, Heaven alone will be able to help you; for truly, if
my cold disdain and repulses had not been my safeguard, they would long
since have torn my honour to rags. All is not gold that glitters. Men
say one thing, but think another: happily, it is with me that they have
to do; and I am not to be deceived, but know well when the shoe pinches
my foot. Above all, I am well born, for I belong to the Crivellis of
Milan, and I carry the point of honour ten thousand feet above the
clouds; by this you may judge, Signora, through what troubles I have had
to pass, since, being what I am, I have been brought to serve as the
housekeeper of Spaniards, or as, what they call, their _gouvernante_.
Not that I have, in truth, any complaint to make of my masters, who are
a couple of half-saints[4] when they are not put into a rage. And, in
this respect, they would seem to be Biscayans, as, indeed, they say they
are. But, after all, they may be Galicians, which is another nation, and
much less exact than the Biscayans; neither are they so much to be
depended on as the people of the Bay."

[4] The original is _benditos_, which sometimes means simpleton, but is
here equivalent to the Italian _beato_, and must be rendered as in the
text.

By all this verbiage, and more beside, the bewildered lady was induced
to follow the advice of the old woman, insomuch that, in