and her mother, who, by the
way, was a Roman Catholic, taught her betimes to pray. But then, to
counteract all these acquisitions, the strange habits of Pisani, and the
incessant watch and care which he required from his wife, often left the
child alone with an old nurse, who, to be sure, loved her dearly, but
who was in no way calculated to instruct her.

Dame Gionetta was every inch Italian and Neapolitan. Her youth had been
all love, and her age was all superstition. She was garrulous, fond,--a
gossip. Now she would prattle to the girl of cavaliers and princes at
her feet, and now she would freeze her blood with tales and legends,
perhaps as old as Greek or Etrurian fable, of demon and vampire,--of the
dances round the great walnut-tree at Benevento, and the haunting spell
of the Evil Eye. All this helped silently to weave charmed webs over
Viola's imagination that afterthought and later years might labour
vainly to dispel. And all this especially fitted her to hang, with a
fearful joy, upon her father's music. Those visionary strains, ever
struggling to translate into wild and broken sounds the language of
unearthly beings, breathed around her from her birth. Thus you might
have said that her whole mind was full of music; associations, memories,
sensations of pleasure or pain,--all were mixed up inexplicably with
those sounds that now delighted and now terrified; that greeted her when
her eyes opened to the sun, and woke her trembling on her lonely couch
in the darkness of the night. The legends and tales of Gionetta only
served to make the child better understand the signification of those
mysterious tones; they furnished her with words to the music. It was
natural that the daughter of such a parent should soon evince some taste
in his art. But this developed itself chiefly in the ear and the voice.
She was yet a child when she sang divinely. A great Cardinal--great
alike in the State and the Conservatorio--heard of her gifts, and sent
for her. From that moment her fate was decided: she was to be the future
glory of Naples, the prima donna of San Carlo.

The Cardinal insisted upon the accomplishment of his own predictions,
and provided her with the most renowned masters. To inspire her with
emulation, his Eminence took her one evening to his own box: it would
be something to see the performance, something more to hear the applause
lavished upon the glittering signoras she was hereafter to excel! Oh,
how gloriously