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��THE GRANITE MONTHLY.
��are the arts, and, above all, music. Music, however, is of less importance in a little town than in a large city. After love and music there is still one more subject to % occupy Italia's society, and that is study.
There is in Italy, and particularly in these old towns, a class of benedicts who consecrate their lives to studying the history of their country, or poring over old manuscripts and writing new ones, in order to explain the passages of the " Divine Comedy." These works occupy all their lives, and never see the light of day • but they serve as a subject for controversy for the entire reading population of the town.
When you read upon the walls of a palace, in the principal street of Pistoja, "Club de la Noblesse," you will ask what they do at a club which does not race horses, entertain actresses, nor gamble ? Well, they discuss Homer's verses, or tell stories of the rivalries of the two branches of some powerful family.
Among these men, these benedicts, was the canon Forteguerri, who died at the fall of the empire in 1815, and a short time after Tuscany had ceased to be a French department to become a state attached to the House of Austria. The canon had become, about a dozen years before, by the death of his two nephews, the tutor and guardian of his niece, Lucrecia Forteguerri. Lucrecia was but seven years old when her father died, leaving her a home at Florence, a palace at Pistoja, a vineyard in the country, and in fact a magnificent fortune. The canon had charge of this property, and Lucrecia established herself at his house with an old attendant.
Agnoli Forteguerri paid but little attention to the little girl, and only kept her near him because of necessity.
The home of the canon, filled from cellar to garret with books, pictures, parchments, and old tablets, was con- nected by a passage way with the public library of the town. He lived there, without luxury, passing inces- santly from his study to the library.
��In the evening he usually received the learned men of Pistoja ; and the Bishop, Monsieur Rospigliosi, his pupil and friend, often honored these gatherings by his presence.
These scholars, reared in the study of antiquity, in love with science, pass- ed in review the intellectual movement of Europe ; communicated their dis- coveries, and talked of their work ; but none of them paid any attention to a little dark creature, poorly dressed, and half wild, who, seated in a corner upon a pile of books, watched the speakers with great deep eyes, and learned to read in Plutarch. When she was ten years old her uncle gave her a French master and a music teacher, because a girl of noble family ought not to be deficient in these branches ; but he took no pains to in- form himself as to her progress, and did not interfere with her reading, which she carried on at random. On the contrary, he congratulated himself that she was not a noisv child, and did not require much attention.
One day, as he was conducting the the Bishop along the passage which led to the library, he saw Lucrecia alone in an alcove filled with -statuary and relics of antiquity. She was evi- dently in deep thought, as she stood contemplating a Roman head, which, several days before, he had shown to the Bishop as a bust of Brutus. For the first time he noticed the serious expression on Lucrecia's face. "What can she be doing there?" he said, in a low voice. Monseiur Rospigliosi also looked at the little girl, and both remained a moment at the door. Lucrecia stood for several minutes in the same place ; finally she turned toward the hall, looking at each head and statue, but she returned to the bust of Brutus, and stopped again as if fascinated.
"You will make a pagan of that little girl," said the Bishop. " She ought to be enrolled at once among the members of the church."
They passed on ; but from that day the Bishop noticed the continual read-
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