_July 10._

I have received the money, dear Donna Evelina. There was tremendous
excitement down at San Massimo when the carrier came in with a
registered letter, and I was sent for, in presence of all the village
authorities, to sign my name on the postal register.

The child has already been settled some days with the nuns; such dear
little nuns (nuns always go straight to the heart of an old
priest-hater and conspirator against the Pope, you know), dressed in
brown robes and close, white caps, with an immense round straw-hat
flapping behind their heads like a nimbus: they are called Sisters of
the Stigmata, and have a convent and school at San Massimo, a little
way inland, with an untidy garden full of lavender and cherry-trees.
Your _protegee_ has already half set the convent, the village, the
Episcopal See, the Order of St. Francis, by the ears. First, because
nobody could make out whether or not she had been christened. The
question was a grave one, for it appears (as your uncle-in-law, the
Cardinal, will tell you) that it is almost equally undesirable to be
christened twice over as not to be christened at all. The first danger
was finally decided upon as the less terrible; but the child, they say,
had evidently been baptized before, and knew that the operation ought
not to be repeated, for she kicked and plunged and yelled like twenty
little devils, and positively would not let the holy water touch her.
The Mother Superior, who always took for granted that the baptism had
taken place before, says that the child was quite right, and that
Heaven was trying to prevent a sacrilege; but the priest and the
barber's wife, who had to hold her, think the occurrence fearful, and
suspect the little girl of being a Protestant. Then the question of the