In the troubled times of the occupation that followed troops had been quartered in the convent. For a long time the sisters and their flock had been hopelessly scattered. When a remnant of the nuns finally returned in their old age it was to find their house dilapidated, their lands seized upon by tenacious hands, and their lambs, who might have been grateful, scattered as lost sheep.
Lawsuits had further harassed them. They lacked earthly guidance. There was nothing to do but pray. The place had been almost forgotten and the bell seldom rang. The few children who did come were hastily sent elsewhere in sheer desperation. Word of this went about the streets of the town and for some years the bell had finally ceased to ring at all. It looked as if the last of the sisterhood would soon depart in peace and poverty, when the Convent of Jesus the Child suddenly took on a new lease of life and service through the unexpected arrival of Sister Marie Jose.
She was not only very much younger than the other nuns, but capable, ambitious, and full of energy. What her former history had been no one at Livorno ever knew. She had been sent to rehabilitate the convent, and she prevailed against great odds. From the first by-sheer force of character and circumstances she had been recognized by the remnant of the sisterhood as superior in fact. With the death of the ancient head of the house she had also become mother superior in name.
After some cogitation, her solution for the difficulties that already surrounded the convent was to avoid importing any more into it. That is to say, she tacitly abandoned the scheme of continuing it as an orphanage, which in fact no longer existed. Instead she started a convent school for prosperous young girls.
The license of the ecclesiastical authorities had not, under the circumstances, been difficult to obtain. Mother Marie Jose had even succeeded in awakening their languid interest. She was an educated woman herself, and she had been ably seconded in her efforts by Father Xavier, a Jesuit, who upon the suppression of his order had been removed from the court of the Duchess of Parma and had gone to reside quietly near Livomo.
Father Xavier combined simple but cultivated manners with an odour of sanctity and the smell of the lamp. He was, in short, a gentleman, a priest, and a scholar. As he had acted circumspectly, he was permitted to continue at Livorno, nominally as confessor to the convent, while his real work took him into certain cosmopolitan circles in the city that both required and appreciated diplomacy and the watchful presence of an able and educated man.
In the new school at the convent he had felt a powerful spiritual lever fall into his hands. Largely through his efforts the daughters of some of the best families of the town and neighbourhood had been obtained as pupils. Even some of the Protestant English merchants in Livorno sent their daughters to "The School on the Hill." Five new sisters had been lately received to teach. These, together with the revenues which were again ponderable, sufficed to conduct the establishment and to take care of the ancient women of the old regime who still survived but whose duties were purely nominal.
Over all this Father Xavier kept a constant and watchful eye. In most things he and Mother Marie Jose moved as one. But the mother superior was justly proud of the new school as her own creation and jealous of its reputation. It might in a few years come to rank with those which received none but the daughters of the rich and the nobility. Such was her ambition.
It was, therefore, with no little consternation that on a certain January evening in the year 1776 she was suddenly disturbed by the unwelcome jangling of the long disused orphans' bell.
One of the nuns upon whom the habits of former years were firmly fixed had answered It automatically. A few minutes later Mother Marie Jose was looking down into the gaping mouth of a black bag in which lay a boy baby loudly lamenting his fate. Besides the baby and his meagre clothes, the bag contained the rich, dark riding-cloak of a lady, an ancient figurine of the Madonna and Child in a curiously worked shrine, and ten Spanish gold pieces. There was nothing else whatever.
Mother Marie Jose was now faced by a serious dilemma. According to the legal requirements of the founders of the convent she was bound to receive the child. On the other hand, she was now engaged in running a fashionable girls' school the reputation of which could never survive a revival of the orphanage. The two were utterly incompatible, and the baby was a boy.
It was also evident from the contents of the bag that the child was by no means a mere stray brat from the town streets. Persons of quality were somehow involved. The convent had already suffered at the hands of the civil law, and this made Mother Marie Jose doubly wary of a possible test case. It seemed especially suspicious that sufficient money for a year's nurture had been provided.
Besides, the statue of the Madonna that accompanied the child had thrown about him from the time of his arrival a certain glamour and protection. The pious old nuns, who secretly looked with somewhat hostile eyes upon the new school, regarded this orphan as their sacred charge from the first. If he were not received, trouble within and without the walls of the establishment might reasonably be expected to follow.
The mother superior consulted Father Xavier. A policy of caution and silence was agreed upon. The boy was duly baptized "Anthony,'' the saint's name day of his arrival. He was then relegated to the most sequestered parts of the building to be looked after by the old nuns skilled in the care of foundlings.
In another part of the establishment Mother Marie Jose and the new sisters continued to teach school without mentioning their involuntary charity. Except for Father Xavier, Contessina, and the few old sisters whose cells abutted on the courtyard, his existence remained unknown. No more unwelcome orphans came to trouble Mother Marie Jose. After a full year had passed from Anthony's arrival she obtained the necessary formal permission; the bell was silenced forever, and the hole in the wall bricked up. The metamorphosis of the Convent of Jesus the Child was complete. What to do about the young orphan who remained over from the old order of things was put off from time to time. The problem was not yet urgent. It seemed better and easier to let it alone.
Meanwhile the boy had begun his education.
One day Father Xavier unexpectedly came into the courtyard and took out of Anthony's hands some yarn which he had been holding up for Sister Agatha to wind.
"My son," said he, "from now on you are through with woolly things and the distaff. Come with me."
He led him down one of the long corridors and unlocked a little door at the end of it. They stepped out together into the bright sunshine of the world beyond the walls. The boy raised his little nose and sniffed the breeze. This for some reason or other caused Father Xavier to laugh.
Even here though there was nothing much to be seen of the great world outside. They had merely emerged into a deep, walled lane behind the convent. They continued down it a little way.
Overhead Anthony could see the same sky that he saw from the court. There were other trees there. He was somewhat surprised by that. So many of them! But he was still too small to see over the top of the high banks. The lane, he told himself, was merely a corridor without a roof. That was at least amusing. By and by, still chatting, they came to the door of a little house and passed through it into a marvellous room.
There was a charcoal brazier in one corner that kept the place pleasantly warm. A small window on one side looked into a court. Another court with new things in it! Birds huger than any he had ever seen were pecking about and dusting themselves. Pigeons were not to be compared with them. There were some old, high-backed, red velvet chairs against the walls. He could never admire the frayed and dusty tassels of these enough. Upon one of them he was actually permitted to sit. Father Xavier, a spare man in a tight, black gown, sat opposite him, smiling hospitably. He would answer all questions. He gave Anthony a small glass of something clear and sweet. Compared with this all else to drink was milk and water. Anthony could not find words to express himself. Finally he cried.