the young in the way they should go? Yet that is the trade
for an old lady whose life has been an easy one. For my part, I regret
that the rules of our convent do not allow me to open the gate."

She pouted, and went out into the sun again, to find her way to the
Santo barred. The three poets, with three lutes, were singing a madrigal
in her honour. They were understood to say that her going was over the
tired bodies of lovers, that she went girdled with red hearts, that her
breast was cold ivory, and her own heart carved in ice. _Nymph_ rhymed
with _lymph_ and _Ippolita_ with _insolita_; the whole, ingenious as it
was, was not _ad rem_; and as for the poor subject of it all, her heart
(far from being ice) was hot with mutiny. She knew herself for a
simpleton--just a poor girl; she knew herself made ridiculous by this
parade; could see herself as she was. Her crisping hair was over her
ears and knotted behind her neck, without garland or fillet or so much
as a brass pin; her green dress, though it was low in the neck, was
tightly drawn over her bust; for what were glorious to be shown in a
great lady, in her had been an immodesty. When she lifted her skirt out
of the gutter you could see some inches of bare leg. Her hands were
brown with work, though her neck was like warm marble in the sun. Eh,
she knew herself through and through just a low-born wench; and "O Gesu
Re!" her heart cried within her, "why can they not leave me alone!"

The three poets--Stazio Orsini in white and yellow, Alessandro del Dardo
in white and green, and Meleagro de' Martiri in a plum-coloured
cloak--accompanied her down the Via Pozzo Depinto to her poor house in
the quarter of Santa Caterina; she lived in the Vicolo Agnus Dei. To
their florid exercises in the language of courts she replied in
monosyllables--"Sissignore," "Grazie, Signore," or "Servo suo"; the
humble words were as much her daily use as _Padre nostro_ or _Ave
Maria_. At the door she must have her hand kissed three times in face of
the nudging neighbours; and to each salute her honesty prompted a fresh
"Grazie, Signore," a curtsy, and a profound blush. Meleagro beat his
forehead to see her so lovely and so unapproachable; Orsini bit his lip;
but Alessandro, mindful of his nails, and not to be Sub-Prefect for
nothing, went away to find the girl's father.

This worthy bowed to the earth before his visitor. In what way could His
Excellency be served? By the acceptance, on Matteo's