oodness.
How could she be afraid here, where he was sovereign priest? Still, she
must satisfy herself about the door: so, lighting the lamp, she went
through all the rooms, and found both the outer doors locked. She was
again putting out the light, when a prolonged cry sounded outside the
window. It flashed through her mind that she had read somewhere that
brigands repeat the cry of wild birds as a signal when making an attack.
Perhaps a whole band was preparing to come in upon her through the
windows she had forgotten to examine. There is no knowing to what
desperate fancies her fevered imagination might have tortured her, if a
whole chorus of hoots had not commenced. So, concluding that if they
were not real owls, but men with evil intentions so stupid as to make so
much noise, they were not worth lying awake for, she resolutely turned
over and went to sleep, and only awoke as the convent-bell was ringing
for mass.

As she opened the windows and looked across the ravine to the gray rocks
beyond, the scene was so peaceful, such a reproachful commentary upon
the troubled night, that she concluded to keep silent about it. And
then, since neither her friends nor the coffee presented themselves, she
set to work to examine the engravings. The first one her eye fell upon
made her start, look again, and finally climb up on the bed and lift it
off the rusty nail, covering herself with dust in the operation, and
carry it to the window. "Yes," she said finally, after having examined
it and the text, a mixture of Latin and old Italian, very thoroughly,
"it is the same, the very same: this discovery would compensate for a
whole series of nights such as I have just been through." And, putting
it down, she ran to her travelling-bag and drew from its depths a very
small painting on copper, and compared them. Hearing just then her
friends at the door, she ran to open it with both pictures in her hands.
"What do you think? I have made a discovery. Look! My picture on copper,
which Pippo in Siena found in the little dark antiquary-shop after his
brother's death and sold to me for sixty cents, is the same as this old
engraving of the famous Annunciation picture in the Church of the
Santissima Annunziata in Florence, which is only unveiled in times of
national calamity. You know, the people believe it was painted by
angels. Here, you see, the text says it was revered in 1252, the artist
being unknown. I knew the original of my picture mus