III.Every morning, Lucia Altimare, draped in the folds of a red, yellow, and blue striped dressing-gown, fastened round her waist and kilted up on one side with gold cord, her sleeves tucked up over bare wrists, an immense white pocket-handkerchief in her hand as a duster, proceeded, after dismissing her maid, to dust her little apartment, a bedroom and a small sitting-room, within whose walls her father allowed her complete liberty. The dainty office, accomplished methodically and always at the same hour, after she had dressed and prayed, was a source of infinite delight to her. It appeared to her that the act of bending her great pride and her little strength to manual labour, was both pious and meritorious. When the moment for dusting the furniture came round, she would tell her maid, w
