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Updated: May 22, 2025
She would go to mass at the Santo, to market in the Piazza; she would cheapen a dress-length, chat with a priest, admonish old Nonna, the woman of the house all before seven o'clock in the morning; and not before then would she so much as sip a glass of coffee or nibble a crust of bread.
"And what have you become, nonna, more than an outcast?" she enquired. "What use to you is money, or a power that the world would sneer at, did the world even suspect that you exist? You are a failure in life, my nonna, and I will not be like you." The Duchessa screamed an epithet and glared at the child as if she would annihilate her; but no fitting words to reply could she find.
The child's aunt, a young woman about twenty-eight, developed quick consumption during the winter and died in the care of the Italian, Nonna Lisa they call her. This woman cared for the little girl, and began to take her out with her early in March on the avenues and streets of the upper west side.
As that fell backwards, so fell I forwards to her knees. I clasped them closely, studded kisses on her hands, I raised my face to hers, and saw her the lovelier for her pale terror. She was speechless. "Listen to me, Aurelia, youngest of the angels," I began, and just then old Nonna burst in upon me crying "Ruin!"
He wrote to his mother that he was alive and well and intended to visit her in company with his young bride as soon as he had finished a great work with which he was occupied. He sent with the letter a portrait of his wife and when the duchess saw it and read the letter she grew ten years younger from pure delight, and old Nonna at least five.
The duchess jumped up, cast one glance into the glass, saw the grey lock distinctly, and then forgetting that she was a princess and Nonna but a humble servant, threw her arms about her and kissed her on the mouth, above which grew so luxuriant a moustache that many a page would gladly have exchanged his young upper lip for her older one.
Fortunately Nonna, after a lifetime spent in the care of babies, had laid aside what we call nerves, else she had certainly fallen in a swoon like her mistress; she was consequently able to support the duchess and soothe her with gentle words. In the meanwhile the young architect from the staging inspected the stone which crowned the dome and found that it had been well set.
His father, named Secundus, was a man of high military rank; his mother, Anthusa, was a woman of rare Christian graces, as endeared to the Church as Monica, the sainted mother of Augustine; or Nonna, the mother of Gregory Nazianzen.
I have done you so much wrong, meaning to do right, that I dare not now risk an act which I know to be wrong. Oh," I cried, as my distress grew, "oh, unsay those words, Aurelia! You could not mean them, they were not yours." She tossed her head, and shrugged. "I will be careful not to say them again, at least," she said. "They evidently distressed you. Come, Nonna we will leave these gentlemen."
When Speranza presented her husband with a son the duchess and her faithful attendant Nonna went to Italy, and the meeting between mother and son was beyond all measure joyful. Two months she spent with her dear children and then she returned home, George and his wife having promised to visit her the following year in the capital of the Greylocks. The cathedral was finished.
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