But amid all this, in a family so constituted, and living under such conditions, young Olympia must have been placed at times in strange positions, have witnessed some suggestive scenes, and altogether have had offered to her ripening intelligence matter for meditation on many things. As to the disputed points, and antagonistic principles and prejudices, which lay at the root of all these jars and difficulties, she seems to have been at that time effectually preserved against all the dangers of partizanship by thorough indifference to the whole subject. The arrangement by which she had become a resident at the court was to her a subject of unmixed rejoicing and exultation. The household duties which the narrow circumstances of her father's home had imposed upon her, had occasioned many a sigh over the hours thus lost to her beloved studies. Now her whole life was to be devoted under the most favourable circumstances to the prosecution of them. "Henceforward," writes Calcagnini in a letter to her, "you may give yourself up to your favourite pursuits, change the distaff for the pen, house linen for books, and the exercise of the fingers for that of the mind.... It will now be for you to preserve without flaw the good gifts which you have received from your parents—modesty, candour, and virtuous principles, and to add to them wisdom, elegance, high–mindedness, and contempt for all that is base."[55] [Sidenote: FIRST COMPOSITIONS.] She was, moreover, still to be under the tuition of her father in the palace, and was to share with the Princess Anne the Greek lessons of Sinapi.