The Creation Of Eve Read Online Free PDF

the third floor. It is hot Up here and dusty. I have only the company of a striped cat, who is more interested in the mice scurrying in the walls than in me. I yearn deeply for my sisters, but I do not seek them out, for if my sisters may come, so may Francesca, and I cannot bear her questioning looks. On our three-week journey home, she was not able to extract from me what had happened in Rome, and I will not tell her. Her opinion of me would plummet, and I could not stand for her to be one of those servants who has deference on her face and mockery in her heart.
    Early this afternoon, Papa had stepped into my room with a goblet, awaking me from the troubled sleep into which I had fallen after writing the previous entry. The sparrows outside in the sunny courtyard swooped amongst the poplar trees as I sat Up to receive the cup; a donkey brayed in the distance.
    "Have your sisters been Up to see you?" he asked.
    "No, though I can hear them downstairs. Why do they not come to see me?"
    "Remarkable--for once they obey me. I told them not to bother you yet. Drink this."
    I took a sip from the cup. The taste of rosemary and orange spirits lingered on my tongue. Hungary water, an expensive medicine. "Papa, we can't afford this."
    "Certainly we can. Besides, the apothecary extended me credit again. Why that mean-tempered man should be so generous to me all these years, I do not know, but I shall not look a gift mule in the mouth. Drink Up, cara mia . It is good for you."
    I lowered the cup. "How is Elena?"
    "We don't hear much from your sister, I'm sorry to say. But a convent is not a place that encourages a lively correspondence."
    I watched two sparrows squabble on a bough. I remembered when Elena, at fifteen, announced that she had chosen to take the veil. Papa had reacted with pride tempered with much puzzlement. At Elena's insistence, he had sent her with me to painting lessons soon after I had begun them, and she had shown great promise. She was excellent at drawing. Did she truly wish to put aside her talent to be a nun? Elena assured Papa she would be able to Use her skills in illuminating manuscripts or embroidering vestments for the clergy, which seemed to comfort him very little. Mamma, on the other hand, was relieved by Elena's decision--she could turn her worry about Elena over to the nuns. There would be one fewer person on her endless list of prayers.
    When I had questioned Elena in the weeks preceding her departure, she had responded with Uncharacteristic piety about wishing to be a bride of Christ. Only on the eve before Papa was to take her in a rented carriage to the Convent of the Holy Virgins in Mantua had she come out with the truth.
    We had lain in our bed in the dark, surrounded by the soft breathing of our four sleeping younger sisters: Lucia, age eleven, Minerva, eight, Europa, six, and four-year-old Anna Maria, curled Up with the snoring Francesca. From our open window came the incessant sawing of crickets. "Very well," Elena said, "I shall tell, but you must not breathe a word."
    "Not one," I whispered.
    I heard her swallow before she began. "You know we have no money for dowries. What little Papa makes printing and selling books is given by Mamma to the Church."
    I could not argue this. Though Papa tried to hide his worries, I had seen the grocer come into Papa's shop and leave with precious illuminated manuscripts in exchange for Unpaid bills. The baker now owned Papa's press. Our clothes were hand-me-downs from our rich cousins in Milan. Truth is, Papa reads more books than he sells.
    "Have you stopped to think what kind of man I shall attract with no money to recommend me? Some sniffling pale clerk in the magistrate 's office? A butcher with pigs' entrails Under his nails?"
    "Elena--"
    "I have not your talent, Sofi. I shall never rise above my sex and be the wonder that you are. I know what I am--a poor nobleman's second daughter. It is my fate to be claimed by some dreary Cremonese cheesemaker and