Title:  Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861

Author:  Various

Release Date:  May 7, 2004 [EBook #12285]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

*** Start of this project gutenberg EBOOK Atlantic monthly, no. 44 ***

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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

A magazine of literature, art, and politics.

Vol.  VII.—­June, 1861.—­No.  XLIV.

AGNES OF SORRENTO.

CHAPTER V.

Il padre Francesco.

The next morning Elsie awoke, as was her custom,—­when the very faintest hue of dawn streaked the horizon.  A hen who has seen a hawk balancing his wings and cawing in mid-air over her downy family could not have awakened with her feathers, metaphorically speaking, in a more bristling state of caution.

“Spirits in the gorge, quotha?” said she to herself, as she vigorously adjusted her dress.  “I believe so,—­spirits in good sound bodies, I believe; and next we shall hear, there will be rope-ladders, and climbings, and the Lord knows what.  I shall go to confession this very morning, and tell Father Francesco the danger; and instead of taking her down to sell oranges, suppose I send her to the sisters to carry the ring and a basket of oranges?”

“Ah, ah!” she said, pausing, after she was dressed, and addressing a coarse print of Saint Agnes pasted against the wall,—­“you look very meek there, and it was a great thing no doubt to die as you did; but if you’d lived to be married and bring up a family of girls, you’d have known something greater.  Please, don’t take offence with a poor old woman who has got into the way of speaking her mind freely!  I’m foolish, and don’t know much,—­so, dear lady, pray for me!” And old Elsie bent her knee and crossed herself reverently, and then went out, leaving her young charge still sleeping.

It was yet dusky dawn when she might have been seen kneeling, with her sharp, clear-cut profile, at the grate of a confession-box in a church in Sorrento.  Within was seated a personage who will have some influence on our story, and who must therefore be somewhat minutely introduced to the reader.

Il Padre Francesco had only within the last year arrived in the neighborhood, having been sent as superior of a brotherhood of Capuchins, whose convent was perched on a crag in the vicinity.  With this situation came a pastoral care of the district; and Elsie and her grand-daughter found in him a spiritual pastor very different from the fat, jolly, easy Brother Girolamo, to whose place he had been appointed.  The latter had been one of those numerous priests taken from the peasantry, who never rise above the average level of thought of the body from which they are drawn.  Easy, gossipy, fond of good living and good stories, sympathetic in troubles and in joys, he had been a general favorite in the neighborhood, without exerting any particularly spiritualizing influence.