Dionea appeared, rather out of place, an amazing little beauty, dark,
lithe, with an odd, ferocious gleam in her eyes, and a still odder
smile, tortuous, serpentine, like that of Leonardo da Vinci's women,
among the plaster images of St. Francis, and the glazed and framed
samplers before the little statue of the Virgin, which wears in summer
a kind of mosquito-curtain to guard it from the flies, who, as you
know, are creatures of Satan.

Speaking of Satan, does your Excellency know that on the inside of our
little convent door, just above the little perforated plate of metal
(like the rose of a watering-pot) through which the Sister-portress
peeps and talks, is pasted a printed form, an arrangement of holy names
and texts in triangles, and the stigmatized hands of St. Francis, and a
variety of other devices, for the purpose, as is explained in a special
notice, of baffling the Evil One, and preventing his entrance into that
building? Had you seen Dionea, and the stolid, contemptuous way in
which she took, without attempting to refute, the various shocking
allegations against her, your Excellency would have reflected, as I
did, that the door in question must have been accidentally absent from
the premises, perhaps at the joiner's for repair, the day that your
_protegee_ first penetrated into the convent. The ecclesiastical
tribunal, consisting of the Mother Superior, three Sisters, the
Capuchin Director, and your humble servant (who vainly attempted to be
Devil's advocate), sentenced Dionea, among other things, to make the
sign of the cross twenty-six times on the bare floor with her tongue.
Poor little child! One might almost expect that, as happened when Dame
Venus scratched her hand on the thorn-bush, red roses should sprout up
between the fissures of the dirty old bricks.

_October 14, 1883_.