CHAPTER II

My Grandmother Comes to Padua, and Takes Me to Dr. Gozzi's School--My
First Love Affair

As soon as I was left alone with the Sclavonian woman, she took me up to
the garret, where she pointed out my bed in a row with four others, three
of which belonged to three young boys of my age, who at that moment were
at school, and the fourth to a servant girl whose province it was to
watch us and to prevent the many peccadilloes in which school-boys are
wont to indulge. After this visit we came downstairs, and I was taken to
the garden with permission to walk about until dinner-time.

I felt neither happy nor unhappy; I had nothing to say. I had neither
fear nor hope, nor even a feeling of curiosity; I was neither cheerful
nor sad. The only thing which grated upon me was the face of the mistress
of the house. Although I had not the faintest idea either of beauty or of
ugliness, her face, her countenance, her tone of voice, her language,
everything in that woman was repulsive to me. Her masculine features
repelled me every time I lifted my eyes towards her face to listen to
what she said to me. She was tall and coarse like a trooper; her
complexion was yellow, her hair black, her eyebrows long and thick, and
her chin gloried in a respectable bristly beard: to complete the picture,
her hideous, half-naked bosom was hanging half-way down her long chest;
she may have been about fifty. The servant was a stout country girl, who
did all the work of the house; the garden was a square of some thirty
feet, which had no other beauty than its green appearance.