Chapter 26 - Page 2

marriages are too often entered into, in countries where
the customs of society prevent an intercourse between the sexes. The Conde
never possessed the affections of his wife. Of a stern and unyielding
disposition, his harshness repelled her love; and as she naturally turned
her eyes to the home of her childhood, she cherished all those peculiar
sentiments she had imbibed from her mother. Thus, although she appeared to
the world a Catholic, she lived in secret a Protestant. Her parents had
always used the English language in their family, and she spoke it as
fluently as the Spanish. To encourage her recollections of this strong
feature, which distinguished the house of her father from the others she
entered, she perused closely and constantly those books which the death of
her mother placed at her disposal. These were principally Protestant works
on religious subjects, and the countess became a strong sectarian, without
becoming a Christian. As she was compelled to use the same books in
teaching her only child, the Donna Julia, English, the consequences of the
original false step of her grandmother were perpetuated in the person of
this young lady. In learning English, she also learned to secede from the
faith of her father, and entailed upon herself a life of either
persecution or hypocrisy. The countess was guilty of the unpardonable
error of complaining to their child of the treatment she received from her
husband; and as these conversations were held in English, and were
consecrated by the tears of the mother, they made an indelible impression
on the youthful mind of Julia, who grew up with the conviction that next
to being a Catholic herself, the greatest evil of life was to be the wife
of one.

On her attaining her fifteenth year, she had the misfortune (if it could
be termed one) to lose her mother, and within the year her father
presented to her a nobleman of the vicinity as her future husband. How
long the religious faith of Julia would have endured, unsupported by
example in others, and assailed by the passions soliciting in behalf of a
young and handsome cavalier, it might be difficult to pronounce; but as
suitor was neither very young, and the reverse of very handsome, it is
certain the more he wooed, the more confirmed she became in her heresy,
until, in a moment of desperation, and as an only refuge against his
solicitations, she candidly avowed her creed. The anger of her father was
violent and lasting: she was doomed to a convent, as both a penance for
her sins and a means of reformation. Physical resistance was not in her
power, but mentally she determined never to yield. Her body was immured,
but her mind continued unshaken and rather more settled in her belief, by
the aid of those passions