ind I was treated with marked disrespect by a
pampered minion, the favorite servant of my father. All the pride and
passion of my nature rose in an instant, and I struck him to the earth.

My father was passing by; he stopped not to inquire the reason, nor
indeed could he read the long course of mental sufferings which were
the real cause. He rebuked me with anger and scorn; he summoned all the
haughtiness of his nature, and grandeur of his look, to give weight to
the contumely with which he treated me. I felt I had not deserved it--I
felt that I was not appreciated--I felt that I had that within me which
merited better treatment; my heart swelled against a father's
injustice. I broke through my habitual awe of him. I replied to him
with impatience; my hot spirit flushed in my cheek and kindled in my
eye, but my sensitive heart swelled as quickly, and before I had half
vented my passion I felt it suffocated and quenched in my tears. My
father was astonished and incensed at this turning of the worm, and
ordered me to my chamber. I retired in silence, choking with contending
emotions.

I had not been long there when I overheard voices in an adjoining
apartment. It was a consultation between my father and the monk, about
the means of getting me back quietly to the convent. My resolution was
taken. I had no longer a home nor a father. That very night I left the
paternal roof. I got on board a vessel about making sail from the
harbor, and abandoned myself to the wide world. No matter to what port
she steered; any part of so beautiful a world was better than my
convent. No matter where I was cast by fortune; any place would be more
a home to me than the home I had left behind. The vessel was bound to
Genoa. We arrived there after a voyage of a few days.

As I entered the harbor, between the moles which embrace it, and beheld
the amphitheatre of palaces and churches and splendid gardens, rising
one above another, I felt at once its title to the appellation of Genoa
the Superb. I landed on the mole an utter stranger, without knowing
what to do, or whither to direct my steps. No matter; I was released
from the thraldom of the convent and the humiliations of home! When I
traversed the Strada Balbi and the Strada Nuova, those streets of
palaces, and gazed at the wonders of architecture around me; when I
wandered at close of day, amid a gay throng of the brilliant and the
beautiful, through the green alleys of the Aqua Verdi, or