CHAPTER XVI

I Sup at the Inn With Armelline and Emilie

These innovations were the work of some six months.  The first reform was the abolition of the prohibition on entering the large parlour and even the interior of the convent; for as the inmates had taken no vows and were not cloistered nuns, the superior should have been at liberty to act according to her discretion.  Menicuccio had learnt this from a note his sister wrote him, and which he brought to me in high glee, asking me to come with him to the convent, according to his sister’s request, who said my presence would be acceptable to her governess.  I was to ask for the governess.

I was only too glad to lend myself to this pleasant arrangement, and felt curious to see the faces of the three recluses, as well as to hear what they had to say on these great changes.

When we got into the large parlour I saw two grates, one occupied by the Abbe Guasco, whom I had known in Paris in 1751, the other by a Russian nobleman, Ivan Ivanovitch Schuvaloff, and by Father Jacquier, a friar minim of the Trinita dei Monti, and a learned astronomer.  Behind the grate I saw three very pretty girls.

When our friends came down we began a very interesting conversation, which had to be conducted in a low tone for fear of our being overheard.  We could not talk at our ease till the other visitors had taken their leave.  My young friend’s mistress was a very pretty girl, but his sister was a ravishing beauty.  She had just entered on her sixteenth year, but she was tall and her figure well developed; in short, she enchanted me.  I thought I had never seen a whiter skin or blacker hair and eyebrows and eyes, but still more charming was the sweetness of her voice and expression, and the naive simplicity of her expressions.  Her governess who was ten or twelve years older than she was, was a woman of an extremely interesting expression; she was pale and melancholy looking, no doubt from the fires which she had been forced to quench within her.  She delighted me by telling me of the confusion which the new regulations had caused in the house.

“The mother-superior is well pleased,” she said, “and all my young companions are overjoyed; but the older ones whom circumstance has made into bigots are scandalized at everything.  The superior has already given orders for windows to be made in the dark parlours, though the old women say that she cannot go beyond the concessions she has already received.  To this the superior answered that as free communication had been allowed, it would be absurd to retain the darkness.  She has also given orders for the alteration of the double grating, as there was only a single one in the large parlour.”

I thought the superior must be a woman of intelligence, and expressed a desire to see her.  Emilie obtained this pleasure for me the following day.

Emilie was the friend of Armelline, Menicuccio’s sister.  This first visit lasted two hours, and seemed all too short.  Menicuccio spoke to his well-beloved at the other grating.