an interview with the
Abbot, who received me with great indulgence. I explained to him that
the distress I suffered was occasioned by the loss that my sequestration
was causing my excellent manager, and begged him to use his influence to
have me released from the monastery. The Abbot listened attentively, and
after a pause replied that there was but one person who could arrange
the matter, and that was his sister the Countess Belverde, whose
well-known piety gave her considerable influence in such matters. I now
saw that no alternative remained but to confess the truth; and with
tears of agitation I avowed my sex, and threw myself on his mercy.

I was not disappointed in the result. The Abbot listened with the
greatest benevolence to all the details of my adventure. He laughed
heartily at his sister's delusion, but said I had done right in not
undeceiving her, as her dread of ridicule might have led to unpleasant
reprisals. He declared that for the present he could not on any account
consent to let me out of his protection; but he promised if I submitted
myself implicitly to his guidance, not only to preserve me from the
Belverde's machinations, but to ensure my reappearing on the stage
within two days at the latest. Knowing him to be a very powerful
personage I thought it best to accept these conditions, which in any
case it would have been difficult to resist; and the next day he
informed me that the Holy Office had consented to the Signorina Miranda
Malmocco's appearing on the stage of Pianura during the remainder of the
season, in consideration of the financial injury caused to the manager
of the company by the edifying conversion of her twin-brother.

"In this way," the Abbot was pleased to explain, "you will be quite safe
from my sister, who is a woman of the most unexceptionable morals, and
at the same time you will not expose our excellent Bishop to the charge
of having been a party to a grave infraction of ecclesiastical
discipline.--My only condition," he added with a truly paternal smile,
"is that, after the Signorina Miranda's performance at the theatre her
twin-brother the Signor Mirandolino shall return every evening to the
monastery: a condition which seems necessary to the preservation of our
secret, and which I trust you will not regard as too onerous, in view of
the service I have been happy enough to render you."

It would have ill become me to dispute the excellent ecclesiastic's
wishes, and Tartag