ally
instilling strange notions into their heads, striving, by every possible
method, to make them despise the religion of their own land, and take up
that of the foreign country in which they were. And sure enough, in a
little time, the girls had altogether left off going to an English
chapel, and were continually visiting places of Italian worship. The old
governor, it is true, still went to his church, but he appeared to be
hesitating between two opinions; and once, when he was at dinner, he said
to two or three English friends that, since he had become better
acquainted with it, he had conceived a much more favourable opinion of
the Catholic religion than he had previously entertained. In a word, the
priest ruled the house, and everything was done according to his will and
pleasure; by degrees he persuaded the young ladies to drop their English
acquaintances, whose place he supplied with Italians, chiefly females. My
poor old governor would not have had a person to speak to--for he never
could learn the language--but for two or three Englishmen who used to
come occasionally and take a bottle with him in a summer-house, whose
company he could not be persuaded to resign, notwithstanding the
entreaties of his daughters, instigated by the priest, whose grand
endeavour seemed to be to render the minds of all three foolish, for his
own ends. And if he was busy above stairs with the governor, there was
another busy below with us poor English servants, a kind of subordinate
priest, a low Italian; as he could speak no language but his own, he was
continually jabbering to us in that, and by hearing him the maids and
myself contrived to pick up a good deal of the language, so that we
understood most that was said, and could speak it very fairly; and the
themes of his jabber were the beauty and virtues of one whom he called
Holy Mary, and the power and grandeur of one whom he called the Holy
Father; and he told us that we should shortly have an opportunity of
seeing the Holy Father, who could do anything he liked with Holy Mary: in
the meantime we had plenty of opportunities of seeing Holy Mary, for in
every church, chapel, and convent to which we were taken, there was an
image of Holy Mary, who, if the images were dressed at all in her
fashion, must have been very fond of short petticoats and tinsel, and
who, if those said figures at all resembled her in face, could scarcely
have been half as handsome as either of my two fe