done, the tender conscience of so exemplary a member of the flock as La Signora Dossi, should still give her the slightest uneasiness—why, there was the confessional!—what for, save for the ease and comfort of tender consciences? Yes! but about repenting? “If one knows that one is looking forward to one’s little partridge à la Milanese at night?” suggested La Clementina, doubtfully. Then it was that the director was put on his mettle, and showed that he was worth his hire. He plunged at once with the utmost intrepidity into a turbid ocean of metaphysics, splashing about long Latin words that sounded to the patient as if he were exorcising a whole legion of devils; distinguishing; dividing mental acts with a dexterity of scalpel equal to the highest feats of moral surgery; striking the boundary line between foreknowledge and intention with masterly precision; taking human volition in his teeth, and shaking it to that degree that it was a mere tangle of rags when he had done with it; and, finally, convincing his much edified though utterly puzzled hearer, that she might look forward to her partridge à la Milanese as fondly as she pleased, with the safest possible conscience.
The Signora Clementina Dossi, when she thus regularised for the second time, was no longer the sylph-like creature that she had been some twenty-five or thirty years before. On the contrary, she had become remarkably stout. And what was odd was that she seemed now to be as fond of calling attention to this latter peculiarity, as she had once been proud of her as remarkably slender figure. She had preserved a girdle which she had formerly worn, and hung it up in her drawing-room by the side of one which showed the circumference of her present portly person. The former, which had girdled the unregularised Tina Tratti, measured some twenty inches; the latter, showing the extent to which worthy Clementina Dossi had prospered under her twofold process of regularising, exhibited a length of some sixty. La Dossi was very fond of pointing to these two records, especially if any slim young girls came into her room. She would make them try on the ex-sylph’s girdle, and then say, “That is what I was when I was your age, my dear! but t’other is the girth of me now! The Lord has been graciously pleased to increase me threefold!”
And the opportunities for such experiments and warnings were not rare, for young people liked La Dossi. She was goodnature itself. She had still pretty, gentle, dove-like eyes, and the complexion of her large fat face was almost as delicately pink and white and as smooth as it had ever been. She had not a wrinkle in it—as, indeed, it would have been difficult for her skin to find the means of making one, so entirely filled out was it by fat. Her small mouth, too, and still perfect teeth, had suffered but little from the effects of time. But underneath the sweet-tempered looking mouth there was a double-chin of the most tremendous proportions.
All the young people liked her; and though, as has been said, the complexion of the society which she was wont to gather around her was in some degree modified after her husband’s death, the more mundane element was not altogether excluded. (It had been at her house, for example, now I think of it, that Lisa Bertoldi had first met Captain Giacopo Brilli). There was nothing ascetic about her temper or her devotion. She had no sort of notion that because she was virtuous there were to be no more cakes and ale in the world. She thought, on the contrary, that youth was the proper period of enjoyment, and was desirous, to the utmost of her power, to contribute to enabling them to make the most of it.
La Signora Clementina Dossi inhabited at the time of which we are speaking a portion of the first floor of an enormous palace, the rest of which was untenanted. The residence was one capable of surrounding with legions of blue-devils any tenant capable of harbouring such imps. But Italians are little troubled with blue devils; and to La Clementina such devils, unrecognised by her spiritual advisers, were entirely unknown. She had for a small rent as many vast lofty rooms as she chose to occupy. There was no noise in the street to disturb her daily siesta, or mar the comfortable process of her digestion, and the palace was next door to the church she attended, and to which her “director” belonged.
La Signora had lost her one servant, who had married, and was in want of another. That was the simple statement of the case, and all Signor Sandro’s euphemisms about a companion, and a douceur, and such like, were all mere bosh, intended to make the proposal acceptable to the farmer’s family pride—a sentiment which many an Italian peasant nourishes in as high a degree as any long-descended noble.
Nevertheless, the character and kindly nature of Signora Dossi made much of what he had said as good as true. The distance between employers and their servants is much less in Italy than among ourselves, especially between a mistress and her female servants; and both the position and the temper of Signora Dossi were calculated to make the connection in her case really more like one of companionship than anything else. She did most of her own cooking herself—did it con amore, and with as much skill as pleasure. It was, after the religious duties of the morning had been attended to, the great occupation of her day; and Giulia, if she profited in no other way by the engagement the attorney had made for her, was sure to carry away with her from La Dossi, whenever she might leave her, a very useful knowledge of the mysteries of the kitchen. La Dossi had no greater pleasure than teaching the young idea to shoot in this direction—unless, indeed, it were in discussing the results of their united labours;—a part of the business in which she very commonly invited the partner of her toils to share, the more especially as she loved to discuss also at the same time all the rationale of the process of preparation.
Such was the mistress, and such the house, to which Giulia was coming, by the recommendation of Signora Dossi’s old friend, Signor Sandro Bertoldi.
