courts of heaven, and saw the angels crowned with roses and lilies, and
the Virgin on her throne, who gave her the wedding-ring that espoused
her to be the bride of the King Eternal.

Fed with such legends, it could not be but that a child with a
sensitive, nervous organization and vivid imagination should have grown
up with an unworldly and spiritual character, and that a poetic mist
should have enveloped all her outward perceptions similar to that
palpitating veil of blue and lilac vapor that enshrouds the Italian
landscape.

Nor is it to be marvelled at, if the results of this system of education
went far beyond what the good old grandmother intended. For, though a
stanch good Christian, after the manner of those times, yet she had not
the slightest mind to see her grand-daughter a nun; on the contrary,
she was working day and night to add to her dowry, and had in her eye
a reputable middle-aged blacksmith, who was a man of substance and
prudence, to be the husband and keeper of her precious treasure. In a
home thus established she hoped to enthrone herself, and provide for the
rearing of a generation of stout-limbed girls and boys who should grow
up to make a flourishing household in the land. This subject she had
not yet broached to her grand-daughter, though daily preparing to do
so,--deferring it, it must be told, from a sort of jealous, yearning
craving to have wholly to herself the child for whom she had lived so
many years.

Antonio, the blacksmith to whom this honor was destined, was one of
those broad-backed, full-chested, long-limbed fellows one shall often
see around Sorrento, with great, kind, black eyes like those of an ox,
and all the attributes of a healthy, kindly, animal nature. Contentedly