But large as they were, they seemed indistinct, for the paper was blistered with the child's tears; and on the place where they had not fallen, there was a round fresh moist stain of the tear that had dropped from the lids of the father.

Riccabocca renewed, "The priest recommends a convent." "To the devil with the priest!" cried the servant; then crossing himself rapidly, he added, "I did not mean that, Monsignore San Giacomo,--forgive me! But your Excellency does not think of making a nun of his only child!" [The title of Excellency does not, in Italian, necessarily express any exalted rank, but is often given by servants to their masters.] "And yet why not ?" said Riccabocca, mournfully; "what can I give her in the world?
Is the land of the stranger a better refuge than the home of peace in her native clime ?" "In the land of the stranger beats her father's heart!" "And if that beat were stilled, what then?
Ill fares the life that a single death can bereave of all.

In a convent at least (and the priest's influence can obtain her that asylum amongst her equals and amidst her sex) she is safe from trial and from penury--to her grave!" "Penury! Just see how rich we shall be when we take those fields at Michaelmas." "Pazzie!"-- [Follies]--said Riccabocca, listlessly.

"Are these suns more serene than ours, or the soil more fertile?
Yet in our own Italy, saith the proverb, 'He who sows land reaps more care than corn.' It were different," continued the father, after a pause, and in a more resolute tone, "if I had some independence, however small, to count on,--nay, if among all my tribe of dainty relatives there were but one female who would accompany Violante to the exile's hearth,--Ishmael had his Hagar.
But how can we two rough-bearded men provide for all the nameless wants and cares of a frail female child?
And she has been so delicately reared,--the woman-child needs the fostering hand and tender eye of a woman." "And with a word," said Jackeymo, resolutely, "the padrone might secure to his child all that he needs to save her from the sepulchre of a convent; and ere the autumn leaves fall, she might be sitting on his knee.

Padrone, do not think that you can conceal from me the truth, that you love your child better than all things in the world,--now the Patria is as dead to you as the dust of your fathers,--and your heart-strings would crack with the effort to tear her from them, and consign her to a convent.