“You are aware, Evelyn, that the conditions you speak of are rather those of the laws of his country, than his own. As a Protestant, your marriage with a Catholic would in Naples be considered illegal, and your children illegitimate. A dispensation from the Pope would, on the other hand, be too costly. You have therefore no alternative—either you must give up the marriage, or change your religion.” “Oh, you sensible creature!” exclaimed Evelyn, with some petulance. “Miss Edgeworth must have had you as her model when she portrayed her prudent and proper heroines. Why, my dear soul, Catholics never marry in Lent—so I have two months before me—‘Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.’” “Ah! Evelyn, Evelyn, incorrigible at thirty as at thirteen, when will you come to years of discretion!” The entrance of di Balzano put an end to our conversation, which took place one evening in our apartment in the Piazza di Spagna, in Rome, where we had ostensibly come with the view of assisting at the ceremonies of the Holy Week. The duke came to propose for that evening a party to view the Coliseum by moonlight. Ever love-loyal to his lady’s lightest wish, her lover’s one thought was to give her pleasure; and as his friends and acquaintances were all highly placed, we had facilities for sight-seeing rarely granted to strangers. Our mornings were usually employed in lionizing the various galleries and churches of the Eternal City. To one small chamber in the Vatican we returned again and again. Need I say, it was to pass hours before the most perfect statue ever fashioned by mortal chisel—the glorious, the divine Apollo! Oh! I can well imagine how a young maiden pined away and died for love of that majestic form—those delicate features, so beautiful in their proud consciousness of power. I can well believe how her tender bosom thrilled with a hope that was almost an agony, as she in fancy beheld the magnetic flame of life animate the marble and reveal the present god. Ah, me! poor child—and is she the only one of her sex who has lived, and loved—aye, and died for a shadow—a phantasy? Are we not all doomed to make idols, and, sooner or later, to “find them clay?” Evelyn and myself agreed that, on leaving these galleries, as it were, “drunk with beauty,” every one we met appeared to us plain and homely. Rome is rather unfavorable to the development of the tender passion. Nor did it surprise me that here Numa Pompilius preferred a visionary nymph to a daughter of earth.