But the whole was softened down to a picture of domestic comfort.

The tapestries and curtains hung in careless folds, the beds admitted of sleep, and the pictures were delicate copies by the pencil of some youthful amateur, whose leisure had been exercised in this gentle and feminine employment.
The fair being herself, whose early instruction had given birth to so many skilful imitations of the divine expression of Raphael, or to the vivid tints of Titian, was at that hour in her privacy, discoursing with her ghostly adviser, and one of her own sex, who had long discharged the joint trusts of instructor and parent.

The years of the lady of the palace were so tender that, in a more northern region, she would scarcely have been deemed past the period of childhood, though in her native land, the justness and maturity of her form, and the expression of a dark, eloquent eye, indicated both the growth and the intelligence of womanhood.
"For this good counsel I thank you, my father, and my excellent Donna Florinda will thank you still more, for your opinions are so like her own, that I sometimes admire the secret means by which experience enables the wise and the good to think so much alike, on a matter of so little personal interest." A slight but furtive smile struggled around the mortified mouth of the Carmelite, as he listened to the naive observation of his ingenuous pupil.
"Thou wilt learn, my child," he answered, "as time heaps wisdom on thy head, that it is in concerns which touch our passions and interests least, we are most apt to decide with discretion and impartiality.
Though Donna Florinda is not yet past the age when the heart is finally subdued, and there is still so much to bind her to the world, she will assure thee of this truth, or I greatly mistake the excellence of that mind, which hath hitherto led her so far blameless, in this erring pilgrimage to which we are all doomed." Though the cowl was over the head of the speaker, who was evidently preparing to depart, and his deeply-seated eye never varied from its friendly look at the fair face of her he instructed, the blood stole into the pale cheeks of the maternal companion, and her whole countenance betrayed some such reflection of feeling at his praise, as a wintry sky exhibits at a sudden gleam from the setting sun.
"I trust that Violetta does not now hear this for the first time," observed Donna Florinda, in a voice so meek and tremulous as to be observed.
"Little that can be profitably told one of my inexperience has been left untaught," quickly answered the pupil, unconscious herself that she reached her hand towards that of her constant monitor, though too intent on her object to change her look from the features of the Carmelite.
"But why this desire in the Senate to dispose of a girl who would be satisfied to live for ever, as she is now, happy in her youth, and contented with the privacy which becomes her sex ?" "The relentless years will not stay their advance, that even one innocent as thou may never know the unhappiness and trials of a more mature age.

This life is one of imperious and, oftentimes, of tyrannical duties.

Thou art not ignorant of the policy that rules a state which hath made its name so illustrious by high deeds in arms, its riches, and its widely-spread influence.