abbess-sister

Updated: May 29, 2025

And as he spoke there came to some of them who knew their annals well a stinging memory of the tale which was no legend of that pathetic group in their island sanctuary the brothers who were left, after the death of Otto, the exiled Doge, and of Orso, the noble bishop-prince, all of the house of Orseoli, who, with their abbess-sister Felicia, were wounded to the heart because for the crime of too great love and service the jealous and unrequiting Senate had banished them forever from the Venice so loyally served had decreed the extinction of a family to whom, as Doge and Patriarch, the Republic owed the wisest and most self-sacrificing of her rulers!

Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull - A Golden Book of Venice