There was a prince Marescotti, [285] who had two daughters, Cecilia and
Giacinta. From her childhood Cecilia had always been gentle and pious,
and everyone said, 'When she grows up she will be a nun.' Giacenta
was proud, handsome, and passionate, and everyone said, 'She will be
a leader of society, and woe betide whoso offends her.'
But their father, good man, [286] knew them better, and one day he
announced to them the choice of a state of life which he had made
for them; for the pious, gentle Cecilia there was a great lord coming
from abroad to make her his wife; but the proud, passionate Giacinta
was to enter a convent.
The one was as dismayed as the other at the time, though the event
showed he had chosen right. Cecilia, who loved quiet and repose,
tenderly entreated her father to let her off the anxieties and
responsibilities of becoming the head of a great family, while Giacinta
made a great noise [287] at the idea of her beauty and talents being
laid up hidden in a nun's cell. Nevertheless, in those days long gone
by, girls were used to obey. [288] Cecilia married and proved herself
an exemplary wife and mother, and carried respect for religion wherever
she went.
Giacinta, on the other hand, took all her worldly state into her
convent with her; her cell was furnished like the drawing-room of a
palace, and she insisted on having her maids to wait on her; the other
nuns she scarcely spoke to, and treated as the dust under her feet.
One day the bishop came to visit the convent. 'What a smell!' [289]
he said, as he passed the cell of Giacinta Marescotti.
'A smell, indeed! In my cell which is not only the sweetest in
the convent, but which is the only one fit to go into!' exclaimed
poor Giacinta in deep indignation. 'What can you possibly mean by
"a smell!"'
'A smell of sin!' responded the bishop; and it was observed that for
a wonder Giacinta made no retort.
'A smell of sin,' said Giacinta to herself, as she sat alone in her
elegant and luxurious cell that night. The words had touched her
soul and awakened a train of thoughts latent and undisturbed till
then. Always hitherto she had ambitioned the loftiest, most refined
objects of research, and thought she knew the secret of attaining
them. The bishop's words spoke to her of there being 'a more excellent
way' yet. They cast a light upon a higher path than that which she
was treading, and revealed to her that those who walked along it,
lowly as they might seem, could afford to look down upon hers.
She saw that those who despised distinctions were grander than those
who courted them, to become, in the end, their slaves; that those
who aspired to celestial joys were nobler than those who surrounded
themselves with the most exquisite luxuries of earth. [290]
From that day, little by little, [291] Giacinta's cell grew nearer
and nearer to the pattern of the House of Nazareth. The mirror,
the cosmetics, and the easy couch made way for the crucifix, the
discipline, and the penitential chain. [292] From having been shunned
as a type of worldliness, she became to her whole order a model of
humility and mortification. [293]