doubly beggared at a stroke.

In this extremity she turned to a sister of her father's, who lived near
Treviso; and this excellent woman, though persuaded that her brother's
heretical views had doomed him to everlasting torment, did not scruple
to offer his child a home. Here Fulvia had lived for two years when her
aunt's sudden death left her destitute; for the good lady, to atone for
having given shelter to a niece of doubtful orthodoxy, had left the
whole of her small property to the Church.

Fulvia's only other relations were certain distant cousins of her
mother's, members of the Venetian nobility, but of the indigent class
called Barnabotti, who lived on the bounty of the state. While in
Treviso she had made the acquaintance of one of these cousins, a
stirring noisy fellow involved in all the political agitations of the
state. It was among the Barnabotti, the class most indebted to the
government, that these seditious movements generally arose; and Fulvia's
cousin was one of the most notorious malcontents of his order. She had
mistaken his revolutionary bluster for philosophic enlightenment; and,
persuaded that he shared in her views, she rashly appealed to him for
help. With the most eloquent expressions of sympathy he offered her a
home under his own roof; but on reaching Venice she was but ill-received
by his wife and family, who made no scruple of declaring that, being but
pensioners themselves, they were in no state to nourish their pauper
relatives. Fulvia could not but own that they were right; for they lived
in the garret of a half-ruined house, pawning their very beds to pay for
ices in the Piazza and sitting at home all the week in dirty shifts and
night-caps that they might go to mass in silk and powder on a Sunday.
After two months of wretchedness with these unfriendly hosts, whom she
vainly tried to conciliate by a hundred little services and attentions
the poor girl resolved to return to Milan, where she hoped to obtain
some menial position in the household of one of her father's friends.
Her cousins, at this, made a great outcry, protesting that none of their
blood should so demean herself, and that they would spare no efforts to
find some better way of providing for her. Their noble connections gave
Fulvia the hope that they might obtain a small pension for her, and she
unsuspiciously yielded to their wishes; but to her dismay she learned a
few weeks later, that, thanks to their exertions, she was