As we passed for the first time in our lives over the littered, disconsolate spot where, in the heavy rain, a pack of ruffians and drabs were sprawling, she took care to point out one of those two convents--a plain yellow house, closely shuttered, and by its side the red roof and rickety cross of the church appurtenant. "That," she said, "is the Convent of SS. Maria and Giuseppe sul Prato. Mark the house. You should look there for your Donna Aurelia." My dejection held me fast; the rain, the heavy air and fog of Florence, this vile Prato and its company of tumbling, scuffling wretches loaded me with an apathy impossible to shake off. "Why there?" I asked her languidly. "Why anywhere within these fatal walls?" "If, as you suppose and I do not suppose, she has taken shelter in a convent," Virginia replied, "it will be in that convent. That society is wholly of Siena. All the Sienese, arriving in Florence (and in need of such shelter) go thither. I am sure there is not a woman behind those walls who cannot tell you what 'l' andare a Provenzano' means--and most of them by more than hearsay. Yes, yes. Either she is there, or she will be there before long--always supposing that she is miserable. For my part, I have never disguised from your honour my belief that she is not so miserable as you flatter yourself." "Aurelia can have no place here," said I heavily. "This is a fatal place. I shall find her in Siena, and am minded to go there this very day." Better for me to have done so; but "Florence lies dead in her road," Virginia persisted, "and by the time she had reached it she would be very ready for one of the two things Florence affords." "And what are they, Virginia?" Her oracular moods always interested me, consorting so oddly with her youth. "Pleasure or religion," said she, and would explain herself no further. Pleasure or religion! It would have needed a greater than the Pythian Priestess to have given me hopes of either in Florence. And yet, as we pursued our way, by the Borg' Ognissanti towards the river, I could not but be struck by the subdued aspect of the citizens, who, far from being the lively impertinents they had been reputed, went gravely and silently about their business, cloaked in sombre black. They did not stand, as Italians love to do, grouped in the piazzas, chattering, gesticulating and acting as much for their own amusement as for their hearers'; nor did they crowd the chocolate-houses, where, as a rule, the very flies are buzzing the news. It seemed to me that church doors alone stood open.