The latter was in madame Capello's chamber when the note arrived. All
the fury that authority loves to console itself with for being under
restraint, all the asperity of a bigot, all the acrimony of party, and
all the fictitious rage that prudery adopts when the sensual enjoyments
of others are concerned, burst out on the helpless Azora, who was unable
to divine how she was concerned in the fatal letter. She was made to
endure all the calumnies that the abbess would have been glad to have
hurled at the head of madame Grimaldi, if her own character and the rank
of that offender would have allowed it. Impotent menaces of revenge were
repeated with emphasis, and as nobody in the convent dared to contradict
her, she gratified her anger and love of prating with endless
tautologies. In fine, Azora was strictly locked up and bread and water
were ordered as sovereign cures for love. Twenty replies to madame
Grimaldi were written and torn, as not sufficiently expressive of a
resentment that was rather vociferous than eloquent, and her confessor
was at last forced to write one, in which he prevailed to have some holy
cant inserted, though forced to compound for a heap of irony that
related to the antiquity of her family, and for many unintelligible
allusions to vulgar stories which the Ghibelline party had treasured up
against the Guelfs.
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