text:  You may well be surprised to see the nunnery over the _Marchande de Modes_! The unhappy inmates thus tormented by the sight and sound of worldly activity have not in Palermo even the solace of a garden; and if these places of more than usual mortification have any connexion with the world without it is by an under-ground passage to some church in the neighbourhood! Thither repair the poor victims of superstition to warble _Aves_ to the Virgin behind their screens and then back again to their monotonous cloister