e was ordered to warn the superior that for
the future visitors were to be allowed to see girls in the large parlour,
provided they were accompanied by a governess.

Menicuccio brought me this news, which the princess had not heard, and
which she was delighted to hear from my lips.

The worthy Pope did not stop there. He ordered a rigid scrutiny of the
accounts to be made, and reduced the number from a hundred to fifty,
doubling the dower. He also ordered that all girls who reached the age of
twenty-five without getting married should be sent away with their four
hundred crowns apiece; that twelve discreet matrons should have charge of
the younger girls, and that twelve servants should be paid to do the hard
work of the house.

CHAPTER XVI

I Sup at the Inn With Armelline and Emilie

These innovations were the work of some six months. The first reform was
the abolition of the prohibition on entering the large parlour and even
the interior of the convent; for as the inmates had taken no vows and
were not cloistered nuns, the superior should have been at liberty to act
according to her discretion. Menicuccio had learnt this from a note his
sister wrote him, and which he brought to me in high glee, asking me to
come with him to the convent, according to his sister's request, who said
my presence would be acceptable to her governess. I was to ask for the
governess.

I was only too glad to lend myself to this pleasant arrangement, and felt
curious to see the faces of the three recluses, as well as to hear what
they had to say on these great changes.

When we got into the large parlour I saw two grates, one occupied by the
Abbe Guasco, whom I had known in Paris in 1751, the other by a Russian
nobleman, Ivan Ivanovitch Schuvaloff, and by Father Jacquier, a friar
minim of the Trinita dei Monti, and a learned astronomer. Behind the
grate I saw three very pretty girls.

When our friends came down we began a very interesting conversation,
which had to be conducted in a low tone for fear of our being overheard.
We could not talk at our ease till the other visitors had taken their
leave. My young friend's mistress was a very pretty girl, but his sister
was a ravishing beauty. She had just entered on her sixteenth year, but
she was tall and her figure well developed; in short, she enchanted me. I
thought I had never seen a whiter skin or blacker hair and eyebrows and
eyes, but still more charming was the sweetness of h