Here many a brother had taught himself patience over the fine, endless
text of an ancient gospel, or wrought into the exquisite illumination of
some missal which stood to him in the place of his daily living those
yearning, torturing, hungering affections which had so enriched a gentle
home--as a brother, less disciplined, had carved his unruly tempers into
the grotesque figures of the reading desks. But for Fra Paolo the great
library of the convent held no unsatisfied yearnings--only an infinite
content and power to achieve.

From the days when those curious in philosophical research had flocked
from the neighboring universities to see this professor of theology who
could not be conquered in argument, and had been confronted by a
smooth-faced lad of twenty, until now, he was still the glory of the
Servi; and well might the friars watch in triumph, as one by one he
gathered laurels for their order. A little human flush of triumph or of
self-conceit would have added charm to his argument, but these notes
were lacking; clearly, logically, unanswerably, he met each question,
convincing without emotion and hastening from the gay court, of which
these intellectual tourneys were the delight, to the welcome seclusion
of the convent. If he seemed to have missed a real childhood,--its
follies, its innocent pleasures, its winsome affections,--so later, the
temptations that would naturally beset a career so extraordinary fell
harmlessly away from him, for a passion for knowledge burned within him,
consuming all ignoble motives and keeping this young scholar, in friar's
robes, in marvelous singleness of heart, in the midst of a flattering
and luxurious court.

Always he had been a law to himself, both morally and intellectually;
never before did it seem that genius had been cast in a mold so orderly
and calm. In that state of intense concentration which was his habitual