Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861

Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44,
June, 1861

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Title: Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861
Author: Various
Release Date: May 7, 2004 [EBook #12285]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY
A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.
VOL. VII.--JUNE, 1861.--NO. XLIV.

AGNES OF SORRENTO.

CHAPTER V
.
IL PADRE FRANCESCO.
The next morning Elsie awoke, as was her custom,--when the very
faintest hue of dawn streaked the horizon. A hen who has seen a hawk
balancing his wings and cawing in mid-air over her downy family
could not have awakened with her feathers, metaphorically speaking, in
a more bristling state of caution.
"Spirits in the gorge, quotha?" said she to herself, as she vigorously
adjusted her dress. "I believe so,--spirits in good sound bodies, I believe;
and next we shall hear, there will be rope-ladders, and climbings, and
the Lord knows what. I shall go to confession this very morning, and
tell Father Francesco the danger; and instead of taking her down to sell
oranges, suppose I send her to the sisters to carry the ring and a basket
of oranges?"
"Ah, ah!" she said, pausing, after she was dressed, and addressing a
coarse print of Saint Agnes pasted against the wall,--"you look very
meek there, and it was a great thing no doubt to die as you did; but if
you'd lived to be married and bring up a family of girls, you'd have
known something greater. Please, don't take offence with a poor old
woman who has got into the way of speaking her mind freely! I'm
foolish, and don't know much,--so, dear lady, pray for me!" And old
Elsie bent her knee and crossed herself reverently, and then went out,
leaving her young charge still sleeping.
It was yet dusky dawn when she might have been seen kneeling, with
her sharp, clear-cut profile, at the grate of a confession-box in a church
in Sorrento. Within was seated a personage who will have some
influence on our story, and who must therefore be somewhat minutely
introduced to the reader.
Il Padre Francesco had only within the last year arrived in the
neighborhood, having been sent as superior of a brotherhood of
Capuchins, whose convent was perched on a crag in the vicinity. With
this situation came a pastoral care of the district; and Elsie and her
grand-daughter found in him a spiritual pastor very different from the
fat, jolly, easy Brother Girolamo, to whose place he had been appointed.
The latter had been one of those numerous priests taken from the

peasantry, who never rise above the average level of thought of the
body from which they are drawn. Easy, gossipy, fond of good living
and good stories, sympathetic in troubles and in joys, he had been a
general favorite in the neighborhood, without exerting any particularly
spiritualizing influence.
It required but a glance at Father Francesco to see that he was in all
respects the opposite of this. It was evident that he came from one of
the higher classes, by that indefinable air of birth and breeding which
makes itself felt under every change of costume. Who he might be,
what might have been his past history, what rank he might have borne,
what part played in the great warfare of life, was all of course sunk in
the oblivion of his religious profession, where, as at the grave, a man
laid down name and fame and past history and worldly goods, and took
up a coarse garb and a name chosen from the roll of the saints, in sign
that the world that had known him should know hint no more.
Imagine a man between thirty and forty, with that round, full, evenly
developed head, and those chiselled features, which one sees on ancient
busts and coins no less than in the streets of modern Rome. The checks
were sunken and sallow; the large, black, melancholy eyes had a
wistful, anxious, penetrative expression, that spoke a stringent, earnest
spirit, which, however deep might be the grave in which it lay buried,
had not yet found repose. The long, thin, delicately formed hands were
emaciated and bloodless; they clasped with a nervous eagerness a
rosary and crucifix of ebony and silver,--the only mark