Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Tonya Allen and PG Distributed
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The setting sunbeams slant over the antique gateway of Sorrento, fusinginto a golden bronze the brown freestone vestments of old Saint Antonio,who with his heavy stone mitre and upraised hands has for centuries keptwatch thereupon.
A quiet time he has of it up there in the golden Italian air, inpetrified act of blessing, while orange lichens and green mosses fromyear to year embroider quaint patterns on the seams of his sacerdotalvestments, and small tassels of grass volunteer to ornament the foldsof his priestly drapery, and golden showers of blossoms from some morehardy plant fall from his ample sleeve-cuffs. Little birds perch andchitter and wipe their beaks unconcernedly, now on the tip of his noseand now on the point of his mitre, while the world below goes on its waypretty much as it did when the good saint was alive, and, in despair ofthe human brotherhood, took to preaching to the birds and the fishes.
Whoever passed beneath this old arched gateway, thus saint-guarded,in the year of our Lord's grace—, might have seen under its shadow,sitting opposite to a stand of golden oranges, the little Agnes.
A very pretty picture was she, reader.—with such a face as yousometimes see painted in those wayside shrines of sunny Italy, where thelamp burns pale at evening, and gillyflower and cyclamen are renewedwith every morning.
She might have been fifteen or thereabouts, but was so small of staturethat she seemed yet a child. Her black hair was parted in a whiteunbroken seam down to the high forehead, whose serious arch, like thatof a cathedral-door, spoke of thought and prayer. Beneath the shadows ofthis brow lay brown, translucent eyes, into whose thoughtful depths onemight look as pilgrims gaze into the waters of some saintly well, cooland pure down to the unblemished sand at the bottom. The small lips hada gentle compression which indicated a repressed strength of feeling;while the straight line of the nose, and the flexible, delicate nostril,were perfect as in those sculptured fragments of the antique which thesoil of Italy so often gives forth to the day from the sepulchres of thepast. The habitual pose of the head and face had the shy uplooking graceof a violet; and yet there was a grave tranquillity of expression, whichgave a peculiar degree of character to the whole figure.
At the moment at which we have called your attention, the fair head isbent, the long eyelashes lie softly down on the pale, smooth cheek; forthe Ave Maria bell is sounding from the Cathedral of Sorrento, and thechild is busy with her beads.
By her side sits a woman of some threescore years, tall, stately, andsquarely formed, with ample breadth of back and size of chest, like therobust dames of Sorrento. Her strong Roman nose, the firm, determinedoutline of her mouth, and a certain energy in every motion, speak thewoman of will and purpose. There is a degree of vigor in the decisionwith which she lays down her spindle and bows her head, as a goodChristian of those days would, at the swinging of the evening bell.
But while the soul of the child in its morning freshness, free frompressure or conscience of earthly care, rose like an illuminated mistto heaven, the words the white-