“How and where have you seen your mistress?” I asked Menicuccio; “for there I see nothing but darkness.”

“The first time the governess chanced to have a candle, but this privilege is confined, under pain of excommunication, to relations.”

“Then she will have a light to-day?”

“I expect not, as the portress will have sent up word that there was a stranger with me.”

“But how could you see your sweetheart, as you are not related to her?”

“By chance; the first time she came my sister’s governess—­a good soul—­said nothing about it.  Ever since there has been no candle when she has been present.”  Soon after, the forms of three or four women were dimly to be seen; but there was no candle, and the governess would not bring one on any consideration.  She was afraid of being found out and excommunicated.

I saw that I was depriving my young friend of a pleasure, and would have gone, but he told me to stay.  I passed an hour which interested me in spite of its painfulness.  The voice of Menicuccio’s sister sent a thrill through me, and I fancied that the blind must fall in love through their sense of hearing.  The governess was a woman under thirty.  She told me that when the girls attained their twenty-fifth year they were placed in charge of the younger ones, and at thirty-five they were free to leave the convent if they liked, but that few cared to take this step, for fear of falling into misery.

“Then there are a good many old women here?”

“There are a hundred of us, and the number is only decreased by death and by occasional marriages.”

“But how do those who go out to get married succeed in inspiring the love of their husbands?”

“I have been here for twenty years, and in that time only four have gone out, and they did not know their husbands till they met at the altar.  As might be expected, the men who solicit the cardinal for our hands are either madmen, or fellows of desperate fortunes who want the two hundred piastres.  However, the cardinal-superintendent refuses permission unless the postulant can satisfy him that he is capable of supporting a wife.”

“How does he choose his bride?”

“He tells the cardinal what age and disposition he would prefer, and the cardinal informs the mother-superior.”

“I suppose you keep a good table, and are comfortably lodged.”

“Not at all.  Three thousand crowns a year are not much to keep a hundred persons.  Those who do a little work and earn something are the best off.”

“What manner of people put their daughters in such a prison?”

“Either poor people or bigots who are afraid of their children falling into evil ways.  We only receive pretty girls here.”

“Who is the judge of their prettiness?”

“The parents, the priest, and on the last appeal the cardinal-superintendent, who rejects plain girls without pity, observing that ugly women have no reason to fear the seductions of vice.  So you may imagine that, wretched as we are, we curse those who pronounced us pretty.”