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DISTINCTIONS IN DRESS.

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to the women also; and influences, in a mournful manner, their lives. Mental pleasures being denied them, their chief object is to be admired. To appear in the Prado with a handsome mantilla, a fine comb, and an expensive fan, they will submit to the severest privations at home. So that here, as well as elsewhere, external splendour is no indication of real affluence.

"I have heard, since I have been here, of a judge's widow and her four daughters, with an income of eighty pounds a year, appearing every Sunday on the Prado with new satin shoes, and clean white kid gloves."

"The gloves," said Ellen, laughing, "would last them a long time; but as for the shoes, they must, I think, have been made of a piece of Penelope's web."

"Certainly," said Mr. Delville, as some Spanish ladies passed them, "certainly the mantilla is a very becoming dress, descending nearly to the waist in graceful folds behind, and drawn up over a high comb, and fastened with those well-chosen ornaments on the forehead."

"I was told yesterday," said Mrs. Delville, “that there are three distinctions of rank marked by the mantilla. The first is of blond, or lace; that indicates a damsel of the first rank: the Bourgeois have it of silk and lace, the lace in front, the silk behind: and the lower class have it wholly of

156

SACRIFICES MADE TO APPEARANCE.

silk, or silk trimmed with velvet. The price of the first rank of mantillas varies from four and five to twenty pounds. Four pounds is not an uncommon price for a comb; and a fan, I am assured, costs frequently twenty dollars."

"In fact," said Mr. Delville, "hundreds who appear well dressed upon the Prado, live upon bread and grapes to enable them to make this outward appearance. Amongst the thousands to be seen there daily you will not find an ill-dressed person."

"We shall be more charitable when we go home," said Mrs. Delville, "to the external finery of the English people. We shall think of the Prado, and blame them less.

"Unhappily in England we cannot dine on bread and grapes. It is not there certainly that we can justly say,

'Man wants but little here below.'

John Bull must have solid fare, as well as external show and he contrives to accomplish both; but too often at the expense of so much toil and anxiety, as destroys their enjoyment."

PROFESSION OF A NUN.

157

CHAPTER XII.

PROFESSION OF A NUN-PERSUASIONS USED TO TEMPT YOUTH TO TAKE THE VEIL.

MR. DELVILLE had gone out for a walk, and to return some visits; and there was no expectation of his coming back for some hours; when, after a very short absence, he again entered the room.

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"What brought you back, papa ?" said Ellen; we were just saying it was too hot for you."

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'Something that will give you pleasure to-morrow a nun is to take the veil, in the convent of Comendadores de Calatrava. Would you like to

go ?"

Mrs. Delville looked at Ellen: her wishes were written on her countenance, and her mother smiled.

"It will be an exciting and fatiguing ceremony. Let me recommend you to give up all idea of going to the Mendozas this evening; I must not expose my English rose-bud to a too glaring sun."

"I will stay cheerfully, gladly," she said. "Will Frank and Edward go with us?"

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'No, neither of them wish it. I left them with Padre Cabeza, enquiring about the bull-fight; and

158 FEELINGS OF THE ENGLISH PARTY.

hardly able to restrain their transports, because one is finally fixed for next week. And now, adieu. How cool and comfortable you look here; it is an absolute furnace out of doors!" and so saying he left them.

Ellen was supremely happy: this was a pleasure to which she had been looking forward with as earnest a desire as her brothers felt for the bullfight. It was a pleasure, indeed, mixed with pain; which was not, however, the less attractive on that account. The sensations of pity and regret, in well ordered minds, are not without a soothing influence; and we have a secret pleasure in finding ourselves capable of those tender sentiments. After a time, when her joy had leisure to subside, she began to feel an anxiety as to what she was to see: she remembered her mother had spoken of it as a mournful and afflicting spectacle. "Mamma," she said, "you will not like it so well as I shall: but tell me why you think it so sad."

"I think it very sad, my dear, to see a young creature, at an age when she knows nothing of the world, and is incapable of judging of it if she did, renounce it, and all the kind affections of her nature for ever; and condemn herself to a dull round of unmeaning superstition, and the maxims of a religion which forbids her to taste of the living waters at its source. The lives of saints must henceforth be her only amusement:-and she will

PRELIMINARIES FOR THE CEREMONY. 159

either sink into dejection, and die young, or be filled with a vain enthusiasm, and heated religious zeal, which will bring no healing on its wing."

Ellen looked grave after this account; but her curiosity, though repressed, was still as lively as ever; and the next morning she went with her parents to the convent, in a flutter of expectation, in which the happy buoyancy of youth foresaw little

sorrow.

The chapel of the convent was separated from the other apartments by a wide iron grating; so wide that every thing which takes place on the other side is seen as distinctly as if there was no separation whatever. The English party placed themselves close to this grating before the ceremony commenced. Ellen had read no romances, so her imagination was free from all the strange yet attractive influence they retain over the young mind: her eyes, if they wandered from the grate, looked round upon the gathering crowd with all the hilarity of thirteen; while Mr. and Mrs. Delville, whose minds were not taken by surprise, and whose good sense could come but to one conclusion on the subject, that of unmingled disapprobation, waited in quiet thoughtfulness for the commencement of the ceremony.

At the appointed hour, the abbess entered the room on the other side of the grating, accompanied by all the nuns, and by several ladies, friends, and

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