und sleeping in her little white bed with her crucifix clasped to her
bosom, it was no wonder that the Abbess thought her the special favorite
of her divine patroness, and, like her, the subject of an early vocation
to be the celestial bride of One fairer than the children of men, who
should snatch her away from all earthly things, to be united to Him in a
celestial paradise.

As the child grew older, she often sat at evening, with wide, wondering
eyes, listening over and over again to the story of the fair Saint
Agnes:--How she was a princess, living in her father's palace, of such
exceeding beauty and grace that none saw her but to love her, yet of
such sweetness and humility as passed all comparison; and how, when a
heathen prince would have espoused her to his son, she said, "Away from
me, tempter! for I am betrothed to a lover who is greater and fairer
than any earthly suitor,--he is so fair that the sun and moon are
ravished by his beauty, so mighty that the angels of heaven are his
servants"; how she bore meekly with persecutions and threatenings and
death for the sake of this unearthly love; and when she had poured out
her blood, how she came to her mourning friends in ecstatic vision, all
white and glistening, with a fair lamb by her side, and bade them weep
not for her, because she was reigning with Him whom on earth she had
preferred to all other lovers. There was also the legend of the fair
Cecilia, the lovely musician whom angels had rapt away to their choirs;
the story of that queenly saint, Catharine, who passed through the
courts of heaven, and saw the angels crowned with roses and lilies, and
the Virgin on her throne, who gave her the wedding-ring that espoused
her to be the bride of the King Eternal.

Fed with such legends, it could not be but that a child with a
sensitive, nervous organization and vivid imagination should have grown
up with an unworldly and spiritual character, and that a poetic mist
should have enveloped all her outward perceptions similar to that
palpitating veil of blue and lilac vapor that enshrouds the Italian
landscape.

Nor is it to be marvelled at, if the results of this system of education
went far beyond what the good old grandmother intended. For, though a
stanch good Christian, after the manner of those times, yet she had not
the slightest mind to see her grand-daughter a nun; on the contrary,
she was working day and night to add to her dowry, and had in her eye
a reput