ed heavily by. The mother lived.

"My brother Camillo and I were but two and four years older than our
little neighbor. We were children together, and each other's playmates.
When the little neighbor, Sulpizia Balbo, was fourteen, Camillo was
eighteen. My son, the sky of Venice never shone on a more beautiful girl,
on a youth more grave and tender. He loved her with his whole soul. Gran'
Dio! 'tis the old, old story!

"She was proud, wayward, passionate, with a splendor of wit and unusual
intelligence. He was calm, sweet, wise; with a depthless tenderness of
passion. But Sulpizia inherited her will from her father, and at fourteen
she was sacrificed to the vow he had made. She was buried alive in the
convent of our Lady of the Isle, and my brother's heart with her.

III.

"Sulpizia's powerful nature chafed in the narrow bounds of the convent
discipline. But her religious education assured her that that discipline
was so much the more necessary, and she struggled with the sirens of
worldly desire. The other sisters were shocked and surprised, at one
moment by her surpassing fervor, at another by her bold and startling
protests against their miserable bondage.

"Often, at vespers, in the dim twilight of the chapel, she flung back her
cape and hood, with the tears raining from her eyes and her voice gushing
and throbbing with the melancholy music, while the nuns paused in their
singing, appalled by the religious ecstasy of Sulpizia. She was so sweet
and gentle in her daily intercourse that all of them loved her, bending to
her caresses like grain to the breeze; but they trembled in the power of
her denunciation, which shook their faith to the centre, for it seemed to
be the voice of a faith so much profounder.

"While she was yet young she was elected abbess of the convent. It was a
day of triumph for her powerful family. Perhaps the Count Balbo may have
sometimes regretted that solemn vow, but he never betrayed repentance.
Perhaps he would have been more secretly satisfied by the triumphant
worldly career of a woman like his daughter, but he never said so.

"Sulpizia knew that my brother loved her. I think she loved him--at least
I thought so.

"The nuns were not jealous of her rule, for the superior genius which
commanded them also consoled and counselled; and her protests becoming
less frequent, her persuasive affection won all their hearts. They saw
that the first fire of youth slowly saddened in her eyes.