"The countess laughed. "'How absurd! She is too young for such notions.' "'She is only twelve, 'tis true, but she is more advanced physically and mentally than most girls of fifteen. She will be safer in a convent till--till--her restoration,' he added, as if hesitating for the choice of a word. "'If you say so, it must be so,' said the countess with a sigh, 'though it will almost break my heart to part with her. Your instructions have been carried out to the very letter. She will always be a devout Catholic, and patriotically Polish.' "'So far--good,' replied Ravenna. "They both moved off at this point, and not till then did it dawn upon me that they were speaking of myself. "Next morning I was summoned by the countess, whom I found seated with Father Ravenna. "'Barbara,' she said, 'you are going to live in a convent for the next six years, where you will continue the studies you have begun here. Father Ravenna will conduct you to the convent. And do not forget that if I should die he will be your guardian, and you must obey his commandments, however strange they may appear.' "I cried very much on parting from my adoptive mother. "'Courage! It is for the good of Poland,' said the countess, as she folded me in a last embrace. "I failed to understand how Poland could be benefited by poor simple me, still less how my six years' residence in a convent was to accomplish that end. "Under the conduct of Ravenna I travelled southward by easy stages. I began to forget my grief in the novelty of the scenes that succeeded each other. We entered Dalmatia, the country growing in grandeur and wildness with every mile of our journey. "At last we reached our destination,--the Convent of the Holy Sacrament, situated in an isolated valley amid the loftiest peaks of the Dinaric Alps,--and here Ravenna left me after a long conference with the abbess. "My life in the convent was a very pleasant one. Being the youngest person in the establishment, I became a sort of pet with the nuns. Though I took part in the devotional services of the convent, I did not wear the religious habit, nor did I partake of the food of the other inmates. My fare was more delicate than theirs; I wore costly dresses; I had my own dining-chamber with a nun to wait upon me. In short, if I had been a princess they could not have paid me more deference and attention. "My studies were mainly directed by three monks from a neighboring establishment, one of whom, so the nuns asserted, had been a leading statesman of Austria, who, for some offence, had been ordered by the Kaiser to retire to a monastery; be that as it may, his was a mind well stored with political knowledge, and Metternich himself could not have taught me more of the secrets of contemporary history.