“My dear Rugiero, I feel certain that my husband would think as I do—­that for the present they had better stay here with us.  We can turn one floor into sleeping apartments for them, and have one sitting-room in which your sister can receive callers or remain when she wishes to be alone.  You know that I have so often heard you speak of your sister Lucretia that I can take the privilege of giving her an invitation to come and make us a long visit; and so you must tell her.”

“God bless you, dear madama, as you deserve to be blessed!  This is indeed a weight off my heart and mind.”

The result of this conversation was that on the next morning Rugiero returned, bringing with him his sister and her children.  Signora Lucretia responded to the welcome of my parents with expressions of fervent gratitude, calling them the saviors of her family.  She was a short, slender woman, in whose dark eyes, long, finely-cut features, and pale, thin face one could discern the spirit of asceticism and the traces of past afflictions.  Of the children she had buried, all had reached their tenth year in apparent health and remarkable for their physical and moral beauty, but from that age they had rapidly trodden the pathway to the tomb.  None of her children had resembled their father but Eugenio, who was a well-made youth of wiry constitution, and gave every promise of attaining the ordinary age allotted to man.  Celestino was destined soon to rejoin the children gone before.  How can I describe the thrill I felt when I saw that child’s face as he entered the room?  Never had I seen in picture or in dream a countenance so lovely.  But what can I say of those soul-speaking eyes, the large, dark-brown iris surrounded by the brilliant azure-white and shaded by long dark lashes?  Finely chiseled features were added to a rounded face of a clear pale olive, except where a flush like the pink lining of a shell played upon it.  Virginia greatly resembled her brother Celestino, but was in full health, and in spirits that would have been lively but for the constant and harassing admonitions of her mother, who in every free and graceful movement saw a tendency to levity that must be repressed.  The poor child was doomed to a perpetual entanglement of the lower limbs, owing to her garments being made as long as those of a grown person.  If, forgetting decorum, she chanced to skip or jump, Signora Lucretia would exclaim, “Va scompostaccia! sta piu composta” ("Go to, most discomposed one! be more composed"), and seating her by her side would supply her with needlework or knitting until my mother would intercede, assuring Signora Lucretia that the child could never attain healthy womanhood unless allowed the full play of her muscles and the expansion of her lungs by singing and laughter.

“Ah, madama, you know not how I fear lest the natural gayety of her disposition should cause the loss of her soul.”

“Oh, my dear lady, such ideas are born of the troubles through which you have passed, and not of your native good sense.  God has implanted this gayety in your child’s heart to enable her to enter with zest into those amusements so necessary to her development.”