It's not right for you to behave in this way.
Whenever little Gertrude would act somewhat arrogantly and imperiously-as she tended to do-they would say, "You are a little girl. When the prince, the princess, or the heir apparent-who alone of the males was being raised at home-wished to compliment the little girl on her comely appearance, they could seemingly find no better way to express themselves than to say, "You look just like a mother abbess!" No one ever told her outright, "You have to become a nun." Instead the idea was taken for granted and brought up only incidentally every time they spoke of her future. These gifts were always accompanied with a lot of fuss about how they must be well cared for, how precious they were, and the rhetorical question, "She's so pretty, isn't she?" Then came the holy cards with pictures of nuns. The first toys placed in her hands were dolls dressed up as nuns. When she was born, her father the prince, wanting to give her a name that would immediately suggest the idea of the cloister and a name that had been borne by a saint of high birth, called her Gertrude. The only thing left to decide was whether that fate was to be a monk or a nun: a decision that required not the child's consent but its presence. Our unhappy child was still hiding in its mother's womb when its fate was irrevocably sealed. It only hints that he had destined to the cloister all of the younger children, boys and girls, so that his property would remain intact for his firstborn son, who was destined to preserve the family: in other words, to beget children and then torment himself with tormenting them. The manuscript does not tell us exactly how many children he had.
His thoughts were dedicated solely to conserving his estate undiminished, undivided in perpetuity, to the best of his abilities. But the high opinion he held of his title made him feel as if his possessions were barely sufficient to keep up appearances, and were indeed quite meager. She was the youngest daughter of Prince ***, a leading Milanese nobleman, who considered himself one of the wealthiest men in the city.
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