If I turned my head at this last, remembering somewhat of my last scenes and pleasures at the Vatican, I did not contradict her, and she soon wandered on. Had I heard of her aunt, the great Abbess Theckla of the nuns of Quedlinburg? No? Well, even a learned Italian like myself could yet hear something to advantage. There was no one in all the world--save the Lord Pope--so holy as Aunt Theckla. Sometimes she prayed all night in winter in a thin shift in the cold church, kneeling on sharp chains. To atone for her own sins? Not at all. It was for the sins of her family,--her brother, his son, and especially for her niece. But here I had to cry out perforce. “Ah! gracious Gräfin,--you do not mean she prays for sins of _yours_?” “Why not?” The answer came with a matter-of-fact seriousness truly startling. “Of course I am very sinful. If it were not for Aunt Theckla’s prayers, I should surely go to hell. As it is, I hope the good Lord God will some day let me out of purgatory. Do you think He will?” This question straight in my face, and asked with all the honesty in the world. _O tempora! O mores!_ How was I, gayest of the gallants of Rome, with my head filled with Plato and Porphyry and Avicenna, and every other doubting misbeliever, to answer this question, levelled at me by a young girl whom I had met not half an hour before? I confess I dared not look her in the face. “But, noble Lady, do you not by your own pious efforts try to appease the saints?” “Of course,” came the same calm answer. “I belong to ‘St. Ursula’s Little Ship.’” “I crave pardon, gracious Gräfin, but I do not understand.” “I forget,” with a little sigh of impatience. “You are from Italy. I mean the ‘Sodality of the Eleven Thousand Virgins.’ We are all pledged to pray regularly, and say two Credos, five Paternosters, and fifty Ave Marias every day. We fast all we can, and pray to St. Ursula of Cologne. Besides that I wear haircloth all of Lent, and pray still more to St. Anna. You see, she entreats her blessed daughter Mary for us, and makes the Holy Virgin get the Lord Christ to show us mercy. It is clearly explained in a little book I bought at the last Halberstadt fair. But all this, they say, is not enough to satisfy the Lord God. If it were not for Aunt Theckla, I could never sleep, I would be so afraid of hell.” I think by this time I would have welcomed a bear out of the forest, just to change this flow of personal theology; but I was saved by less drastic means.