Put aside thy thoughts for thyself, friend,--counsel me.

If I were to send for Violante, and if, transplanted to these keen airs, she drooped and died--Look, look, the priest says that she needs such tender care; or if I myself were summoned from the world, to leave her in it alone, friendless, homeless, breadless perhaps, at the age of woman's sharpest trial against temptation, would she not live to mourn the cruel egotism that closed on her infant innocence the gates of the House of God ?" Jackeymo was appalled by this appeal; and indeed Riccabocca had never before thus reverently spoken of the cloister.

In his hours of philosophy, he was wont to sneer at monks and nuns, priesthood and superstition.

But now, in that hour of emotion, the Old Religion reclaimed her empire; and the sceptical world-wise man, thinking only of his child, spoke and felt with a child's simple faith..