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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. VII.--MAY, 1861.--NO. XLIII.


AGNES OF SORRENTO.


CHAPTER I.

THE OLD TOWN.


The setting sunbeams slant over the antique gateway of Sorrento, fusing
into a golden bronze the brown freestone vestments of old Saint Antonio,
who with his heavy stone mitre and upraised hands has for centuries kept
watch thereupon.

A quiet time he has of it up there in the golden Italian air, in
petrified act of blessing, while orange lichens and green mosses from
year to year embroider quaint patterns on the seams of his sacerdotal
vestments, and small tassels of grass volunteer to ornament the folds
of his priestly drapery, and golden showers of blossoms from some more
hardy plant fall from his ample sleeve-cuffs. Little birds perch and
chitter and wipe their beaks unconcernedly, now on the tip of his nose
and now on the point of his mitre, while the world below goes on its way
pretty much as it did when the good saint was alive, and, in despair of
the human brotherhood, took to preaching to the birds and the fishes.

Whoever passed beneath this old arched gateway, thus saint-guarded,
in the year of our Lord's grace--, might have seen under its shadow,
sitting opposite to a stand of golden oranges, the little Agnes.

A very pretty picture was she, reader.--with such a face as you
sometimes see painted in those wayside shrines of sunny Italy, where the
lamp burns pale at evening, and gillyflower and cyclamen are renewed
with every morning.

She might have been fifteen or thereabouts, but was so small of stature
that she seemed yet a child. Her black hair was parted in a white
unbroken seam down to the high forehead, whose serious arch, like that
of a cathedral-door, spoke of thought and prayer. Beneath the shadows of
this brow lay brown, translucent eyes, into whose thoughtful depths one
might look as pilgrims gaze into the waters of some saintly well, cool
and pure down to the unblemished sand at the bottom. The small lips had
a gentle compression which indicated a repressed strength of feeling;
while the straight line of the nose, and the flexible, delicate nostril,
were perfect as in those sculptured fragments of the antique which the
soil of Italy so often gives forth to the day from the sepulchres of the
past. The habitual pose of the head and face had the shy uplooking grace
of a violet; and yet there was a grave tranquillity of expression, which
gave a peculiar degree of character to the whole figure.

At the moment at which we have called your attention, the fair head is
bent, the long eyelashes lie softly down on the pale, smooth cheek; for
the Ave Maria bell is sounding from the Cathedral of Sorrento, and the
child is busy with her beads.

By her side sits a woman of some threescore years, tall, stately, and
squarely formed, with ample breadth of back and size of chest, like the
robust dames of Sorrento. Her strong Roman nose, the firm, determined
outline of her mouth, and a certain energy in every motion, speak the
woman of will and purpose. There is a degree of vigor in the decision
with which she lays down her spindle and bows her head, as a good
Christian of those days would, at the swinging of the evening bell.

But while the soul of the child in its morning freshness, free from
pressure or conscience of earthly care, rose like an illuminated mist
to heaven, the words the white-haired woman repeated were twined with
threads of worldly prudence,--thoughts of how many oranges she had
sold, with a rough guess at the probable amount for the day,--and her
fingers wandered from her beads a moment to see if the last coin had
been swept from the stand into her capacious pocket, and her eyes
wandering after them suddenly made her aware of the fact that a handsome
cavalier was standing in the gate, regarding her pretty grandchild with
looks of undisguised admiration.

"Let him look!" she said to herself, with a grim clasp on her
rosary;--"a fair face draws buyers, and our oranges must be turned into
money; but he who does more than look has an affair with me;--so gaze
away, my master, and take it out in buying oranges!--_Ave, Maria! ora
pro nobis, nunc et,_" etc., etc.

A few moments, and the wave of prayer which had flowed down the quaint
old shadowy street, bowing all heads as the wind bowed the scarlet
tassels of neighboring clover-fields, was passed, and all the world
resumed the work of earth just where they left off when the bell began.

"Good even to you, pretty maiden!" said the cavalier, approaching the
stall of the orange-woman with the easy, confident air of one secure
of a ready welcome, and bending down on the yet prayerful maiden the
glances of a pair of piercing hazel eyes that looked out on