II.The Princess Caracciolo, the great benefactress of the poor, the aged, and the children, presided. She reigned in the Hall of Maria Carolina, where the ladies of the jury were assembled, with the mingled air of regal hauteur and amiable piety peculiar to her. An ascetic pallor had left her cheeks colourless and her lips faded; while her person retained the seductive grace of the woman who had loved, and loved to be beautiful. She had left her own poor and her children, for the sake of these other children. The thirty ladies had, with one voice, elected her as their president. There was only one man, the secretary, among them—a professor, a pedagogue, saturated with the principles of Froebel and of Pick; a bald, ambiguous-looking, and perfectly innocuous being. The ladies of the jury sat
