At first I loved the church and its services because the Reverend Mother
loved them, and perhaps also for the sake of the music, the incense, the
flowers and the lights on the altar; but after I had taken my communion,
the mysteries of our religion took hold of me--the Confessional with its
sense of cleansing and the unutterable sweetness of the Mass.
For a long time there was nothing to disturb this religious side of my
mind. My father never sent for me, and as often as the holidays came
round the Reverend Mother took me with her to her country home at Nemi.
That was a beautiful place--a sweet white cottage, some twenty
kilometres from Rome, at the foot of Monte Cavo, in the middle of the
remains of a mediaeval village which contained a castle and a monastery,
and had a little blue lake lying like an emerald among the green and red
of the grass and poppies in the valley below.
In the hot months of summer the place was like a Paradise to me, with
its roses growing wild by the wayside; its green lizards running on the
rocks; its goats; its sheep; its vineyards; its brown-faced boys in
velvet, and its gleesome girls in smart red petticoats and gorgeous
outside stays; its shrines and its blazing sunsets, which seemed to
girdle the heavens with quivering bands of purple and gold.
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