the
Samnite range and the sea, while the almost inaccessible fortresses of
the higher mountains, towards Trevi and the Serra di Sant' Antonio,
offered a safe refuge from the halfhearted pursuit of Pope Gregory's
lazy soldiers.

Something of what one may call the life-and-death earnestness of earlier
times, when passion was motive and prejudice was law, survived at that
time and even much later; the ferocity of practical love and hatred
dominated the theory and practice of justice in the public life of the
smaller towns, while the patriarchal system subjected the family in
almost absolute servitude to its head.

There was nothing very surprising in the fact that the head of the house
of Braccio should have obliged one of his daughters to take the veil in
the Convent of Carmelite nuns, just within the gate of Subiaco, as his
sister had taken it many years earlier. Indeed, it was customary in the
family of the Princes of Gerano that one of the women should be a
Carmelite, and it was a tradition not unattended with worldly advantages
to the sisterhood, that the Braccio nun, whenever there was one, should
be the abbess of that particular convent.

Maria Teresa Braccio had therefore yielded, though very unwillingly, to
her father's insistence, and having passed through her novitiate, had
finally taken the veil as a Carmelite of Subiaco, in the year 1841, on
the distinct understanding that when her aunt died she was to be abbess
in the elder lady's stead. The abbess herself was, indeed, in excellent
health and not yet fifty years old, so that Maria Teresa--in religion
Maria Addolorata--might have a long time to wait before she was promoted
to an honour which she regarded as hereditary; but the prospect of such
promotion was almost her only compensation for all she had left behind
her, and she lived upon it and concentrated her character upon it, and
practised the part she was to play, when she was quite sure that she was
not observed.

Nature had not made her for a recluse, least of all for a nun of such a
rigid Order as the Carmelites. The short taste of a brilliant social
life which she had been allowed to enjoy, in accordance with an ancient
tradition, before finally taking the veil, had shown her clearly enough
the value of what she was to abandon, and at the same time had
altogether confirmed her father in his decision. Compared with the
freedom of the present day, the restrictions imposed upon a young girl
in the R