prints of innumerable saints, say that it is the road to Jerusalem.
The road to the New Jerusalem has no such pallid and spiritual glory:
its colors are those of life. No death but that of martyrdom, with its
rosy blood, waving palm-branch and golden crown, is figured there. Life,
and the joy of life, beauty so profuse that it can afford to have a few
blemishes like a slatternly Venus, and the _dolce far niente_ of poverty
that neither works nor starves,--they lie all along the road.

Silvia was young, and had all her life looked forward to this journey.
She could not be quite indifferent. She looked and listened, though all
the time her heart was heavy for Claudio. They reached the gate of St.
John Lateran just as all the bells began to ring for the noon _Angelus_,
and in fifteen minutes were at the Signora Fantini's door and Silvia in
the kind lady's arms. It seemed to the girl that she had found her
mother again. That this lady was more gracious, graceful, kind and
beautiful than her mother had ever been she would not think. She was
simply another mother. And when Matteo had gone away home again, not
too soon, and when, after a few days' sightseeing, the signora,
suspecting that the continued sadness of her young guest had some other
cause than separation from her brother and sister, sought persistently
and artfully to win her secret, Silvia told her all with many tears. She
was going to be a nun because her mother had said that she must; and she
was willing to be a nun--certainly she was willing. But, for all that,
if it could have been so, she would have been so happy with Claudio, and
she never should be quite happy without him.

"Then you must not be a nun," the signora said decidedly. "The thing is
all wrong. You have no vocation. You should have said all this before."

For already the signora had taken Silvia to see the Superior at Monte
Cavallo, who had promised to receive the young novice in three weeks,
and had told her what work she could perform in the convent. "You are
not strong, I think," she had said, "but you can knit the stockings. All
have to work."

And Monsignor Catinari, whose business it was to examine all candidates
for the conventual life, had held a long conversation with her and gone
away perfectly satisfied.

But when the signora proposed to undo all this, Silvia was wild with
terror. No, no, she would be a nun. Her mother had said so, she wished
it, and Matteo would kill her if she sho