Perhaps in the case of the
young Contessa Violante her great-aunt had sought to find some
attendant and companion for her who should have a tendency to
correct that too great proclivity to retirement from the world--to a
life in which religion was the chief interest and occupation, and to
a sad and unhopeful view of the world around and before her--which
she lamented in her niece. If so, the choice she made was not
followed by the results she hoped from it; and was attended by other
inconveniences.
The Signora Assunta Fagiani, the widow of a distinguished Bolognese
professor of jurisprudence, was certainly quite free from all those
dispositions which the Marchesa regretted in her niece. But she was
not altogether discreet or judicious in the method she adopted for
reconciling the young girl to the world, and to worldly views and
hopes and objects.
She very soon perceived that to Violante the consciousness of her
own want of personal attractions was, despite her yearning for a
life to be filled with thoughts and objects to which beauty could
contribute nothing, a source of bitter and ever-present
mortification. There was inconsistency, doubtless, in regret for the
deficiency of personal attraction in persons who, with perfect
sincerity, declared to themselves that to enter a convent was their
greatest object in life.
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