tended to beg permission to be received into the Romish communion.
"To tell you the overwhelming agony this dreadful privation inflicted is impossible. My father was my world, my all. Three times in the year had he spent two or three weeks in Pisa, ever since I was settled there, that he might every day pass some hours with me in the parlour, and where he never failed to lavish on me every gift his fortune could supply, delight me by the encomiums he bestowed on my music and needlework (always an object of importance in a nunnery), and prove, by his admiring looks and his tender tones, how entirely he loved me. Well do I remember the very last time he had visited me, when, to his question, 'Is there any thing in the world which you want, Sophia?' on my replying 'Nothing, dear papa, save a sister or a brother,' he became dreadfully agitated, and fled from the parlour to the cloisters, where he remained a considerable time. On his return, I saw he had been weeping much, though he then appeared to have regained composure, and said to me, with a tender seriousness which I often recollect, as if it were a presentiment of this being our last meeting—
"'My love, you have a brother, a good and handsome boy, seven years older than yourself, and like you, motherless. His name is Francis
