The case of Sister Giuliana seems to have been but the beginning of an
extraordinary love epidemic at the Convent of the Stigmata: the elder
schoolgirls have to be kept under lock and key lest they should talk
over the wall in the moonlight, or steal out to the little hunchback
who writes love-letters at a penny a-piece, beautiful flourishes and
all, under the portico by the Fishmarket. I wonder does that wicked
little Dionea, whom no one pays court to, smile (her lips like a
Cupid's bow or a tiny snake's curves) as she calls the pigeons down
around her, or lies fondling the cats under the myrtle-bush, when she
sees the pupils going about with swollen, red eyes; the poor little
nuns taking fresh penances on the cold chapel flags; and hears the
long-drawn guttural vowels, _amore_ and _morte_ and _mio bene_,
which rise up of an evening, with the boom of the surf and the
scent of the lemon-flowers, as the young men wander up and down,
arm-in-arm, twanging their guitars along the moonlit lanes under
the olives?

_October 20, 1885._

A terrible, terrible thing has happened! I write to your Excellency
with hands all a-tremble; and yet I _must_ write, I must speak, or
else I shall cry out. Did I ever mention to you Father Domenico of
Casoria, the confessor of our Convent of the Stigmata? A young man,
tall, emaciated with fasts and vigils, but handsome like the monk
playing the virginal in Giorgione's "Concert," and under his brown
serge still the most stalwart fellow of the country all round? One has
heard of men struggling with the tempter. Well, well, Father Domenico
had struggled as hard as any of the Anchorites recorded by St. Jerome,
and he had conquered. I never knew anything comparable to the angelic