which occasions he would spend his time with his friends in some tavern,
coming home at midnight as drunk as a lord and singing verses from Tasso.
When in this blissful state the good man could not make up his mind to go
to bed, and became violent if anyone attempted to compel him to lie down.
Wine alone gave him sense and spirit, for when sober he was incapable of
attending to the simplest family matter, and his wife often said that he
never would have married her had not his friends taken care to give him a
good breakfast before he went to the church.

But Doctor Gozzi had also a sister, called Bettina, who at the age of
thirteen was pretty, lively, and a great reader of romances. Her father
and mother scolded her constantly because she was too often looking out
of the window, and the doctor did the same on account of her love for
reading. This girl took at once my fancy without my knowing why, and
little by little she kindled in my heart the first spark of a passion
which, afterwards became in me the ruling one.

Six months after I had been an inmate in the house, the doctor found
himself without scholars; they all went away because I had become the
sole object of his affection. He then determined to establish a college,
and to receive young boys as boarders; but two years passed before he met
with any success. During that period he taught me everything he knew;
true, it was not much; yet it was enough to open to me the high road to
all sciences. He likewise taught me the violin, an accomplishment which
proved very useful to me in a peculiar circumstance, the particulars of
which I will give in good time. The excellent doctor, who was in no way a
philosopher, made me study the logic of the Peripatetics, and the
cosmography of the ancient system of Ptolemy, at which I would laugh,
teasing the poor doctor with theorems to which he could find no answer.
His habits, moreover, were irreproachable, and in all things connected