heart? Her piety was, indeed, her great indulgence, so eager, so
luxurious, pursued with such appetite as I have never seen in England or
France, nor (assuredly) in Padua, where there is no zest, but much
decorum, in the practice of religion. To see her in church was, as it
were, to see a child in her mother's lap--able to laugh, to play, to
sulk and pout, ah, and to tell a fib, being so sure of forgiveness! No
secret too childish to be kept back, no trouble too light; the mustiness
of the season's oil, the shocking price of potherbs, the delinquency of
the milliner's apprentice who had spoiled a breadth of silk. She could
grumble at her husband, or impart and expect heaven to share her delight
at some little kindness he had done her. Since I have heard her speak
calmly to the Madonna about some young gentleman who had followed her
three days running to Mass, I am very sure that she and Our Lady were in
full agreement on my account. Thus it was that she, who had been early
parted from her earthly parents, nestled into the arms of her heavenly
parents. Upon what warm waves of feeling would Aurelia float into the
bosom of the Mother of Sorrows! With what endearments use her, with what
long kisses coax her for little mercies, with what fine confidence
promise her little rewards! And to compare this passionate flooding of
heart and mind, of corporeal and spiritual faculty with any incense
which that rigid watcher of mysteries had to offer up, were an absurdity
and a profanation impossible even to my deluded vision.

While I watched and compared, however, I did not turn away. I cannot
understand my interest or curiosity, which were very real; I knew that
Aurelia was not in this church, but for all that I stood rooted by a
pillar at the door and kept my gaze fixed upon the woman in the distant
chapel. She may have continued kneeling there, motionless, for some
quarter-hour more; in itself the act of suspense is an absorbing one. So
much was I possessed by it that I forgot all beside it--that I was a