When the one who had invented the epithet repeated it to Monsignor Saracinesca in confession, and he gently told her that it was wrong to speak disrespectfully of her superior, she rather pertly asked him whether any one who lived under a volcano could fail to 'respect' it; whereat he shook his head gravely inside the confessional, but his spiritual mouth twitched with amusement, in spite of himself.

The four novices were inclined to distrust Angela at first, however, as she was not even a postulant, and it was not till she became one of themselves that she was initiated into their language.
It was not long before this took place, however.

From the first, she showed a most unusual aptitude in learning the mechanical part of her profession, and her extraordinary memory made it easy for her to remember the lectures which were given for the nurses three times a week, generally by the house surgeon, but occasionally by the great Doctor Pieri, who had been a pupil of Basini of Padua and was a professor in the University of Rome.

He showed especial interest in Angela, and the pert little novice wickedly suggested that he was falling in love with her; but the truth was that he at once distinguished in her the natural gifts which were soon to make her the most valuable nurse at his disposal.
The Mother Superior expected that she would become vain and gave her some energetic lectures on the evils of conceit.

There was a sort of fury of good about the pale woman that carried everything before it.
She was just, but her righteous anger was a ready firebrand, and when it burst into flame, as often happened, her eloquence was extraordinary.