Used Book – 7 Pocket Books - Mattea

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the beautiful Mattea is fourteen years old and probably has all the men of Venice at her feet. Promised in marriage to a cousin for whom she cares little, caught between her mother's violent displays of authority and her father's business dealings, the beauty proudly announces to her parents that she has "given her heart away." Pressed by her parents to reveal the lucky man, she tells them, to their dismay, that it is the Turk Abul-Amet.

Mattea lifted the tapestry curtain that served as a window, and saw, on the terrace, Abul barefoot and prostrated before the moon.

The profound stillness of his prayer, which the presence of a woman alone with him, at night, in his room, disturbed no more than the flight of a gnat, struck the young girl with respect. "These," she thought, "are the men whom mothers who beat their daughters condemn to damnation. How then will the cruel and unjust be damned?"