curtain behind the grating fell, and the young girl had severed the tenderest link that bound her to the world.  Many other visits were paid—­some to friends of Mademoiselle G——­’s parents (she had long been an orphan), some to ecclesiastical personages who had interested themselves to procure her admission into the Dominican community.  With repeated blessings the young girl left their presence, every day advancing nearer to her spiritual bridal.

At last the day came.  Early in the morning the madrina arrived at the convent with her two little girls of six and eight years old dressed in white as bridesmaids, or, as the Italian term angiolini has it, little angels.  They bore delicate baskets filled with white flowers to strew before the “bride,” and their office during the ceremony was to hold the novice’s gloves, fan and handkerchief.  The young girl herself, looking pale and earnest, walked up the aisle of the convent chapel in bridal robes of white silk, with a veil and wreath on her head, and round her neck a string of pearls, an heirloom in the G——­ family.  Her brother, the only male representative of her once powerful house, was present in the outer chapel, full of grief at a sacrifice which he had never countenanced, and ready to claim that morning the only legacy of his sister the promise of which he had been able to secure—­the thick coils of her black hair when they should have been cut off preparatory to her taking the novice’s veil.  The scene was very solemn.  The nuns sat in their carved stalls within the grating whose black bars divided them from the “bride” and her friends in the ante-chapel:  the chant of psalms and versicles came down from a hidden gallery, and the priest in rich vestments stood at the foot of the altar within the railing.  The service went on in the midst of a palpable hush; the very air seemed hardly to vibrate; the bride, attended by her two angiolini, left her gorgeous kneeling-chair and advanced to the open door in the grating, where the priest met her.  Question and answer were interchanged in Italian, and the young girl vowed that of her own free will she left the world and joined the order of St. Dominic.  Prayers in Latin followed, then again a chanted psalm, and Mademoiselle G——­ was led away through the iron-grated door, which was then closed.  It was not long ere she reappeared in the long close tunic of white serge, her head covered with a temporary veil of coarse linen and her feet shod in sandals.  A procession of nuns, each bearing a lighted taper, escorted her to the foot of the altar (everything was visible through the grating), and she knelt before the officiating priest.  A white woolen veil was handed to him, which he blessed with holy water, the sign of the cross and the prescribed ejaculations accompanying these rites:  he then laid it on her head as a “symbol of the virgin modesty” to which she was now pledged.  Two nuns were at hand to pin it into the right folds while a silver ring was being blessed in the same