The Easter bells ushered in the reign of another spirit.  If the carnival folly was spent, the joy of returning life replaced it.  After the winter diversions of cards, concerts and theatres, came the excursions to the island-gardens of the lagoon and the evening promenade of the fresca on the Grand Canal.  Now the palace-windows were hung with awnings, the oleanders in the balconies grew rosy against the sea-worn marble, and yellow snap-dragons blossomed from the crumbling walls.  The market-boats brought early fruits and vegetables from the Brenta and roses and gilly-flowers from the Paduan gardens; and when the wind set from shore it carried with it the scent of lime-blossoms and flowering fields.  Now also was the season when the great civic and religious processions took place, dyeing the water with sunset hues as they swept from the steps of the Piazzetta to San Giorgio, the Redentore or the Salute.  In the fashionable convents the nuns celebrated the festivals of their patron saints with musical and dramatic entertainments to which secular visitors were invited.  These entertainments were a noted feature of Venetian life, and the subject of much scandalous comment among visitors from beyond the Alps.  The nuns of the stricter orders were as closely cloistered as elsewhere; but in the convents of Santa Croce, Santa Chiara, and a few others, mostly filled by the daughters of the nobility, an unusual liberty prevailed.  It was known that the inmates had taken the veil for family reasons, and to the indulgent Venetian temper it seemed natural that their seclusion should be made as little irksome as possible.  As a rule the privileges accorded to the nuns consisted merely in their being allowed to receive visits in the presence of a lay-sister, and to perform in concerts on the feast-days of the order; but some few convents had a name for far greater license, and it was a common thing for the noble libertine returned from Italy to boast of his intrigue with a Venetian nun.

Odo, in the Procuratessa’s train, had of course visited many of the principal convents.  Whether it were owing to the malicious pleasure of contrasting their own state with that of their cloistered sisters, or to the discreet shelter which the parlour afforded to their private intrigues, the Venetian ladies were exceedingly partial to these visits.  The Procuratessa was no exception to the rule, and as was natural to one of her complexion, she preferred the convents where the greatest freedom prevailed.  Odo, however, had hitherto found little to tempt him in these glimpses of forbidden fruit.  The nuns, though often young and pretty, had the insipidity of women secluded from the passions and sorrows of life without being raised above them; and he preferred the frank coarseness of the Procuratessa’s circle to the simpering graces of the cloister.

Even Coeur-Volant’s mysterious boast of a conquest he had made among the sisters failed to excite his friend’s curiosity.  The Marquess, though still devoted to Miranda, was too much the child of his race not to seek variety in his emotions; indeed he often declared that the one fault of the Italian character was its unimaginative fidelity in love-affairs.