She observed his agitation now, and beheld in it a reflection of her own,
springing from the selfsame causes. "Oh, it was a sign indeed!" she
exclaimed. "And you have come to realize it, too, I see." Next, in a
burst of gratitude that was almost pitiful upon such slight foundation,
"Oh, blessed Agostino!" she cried out.

Then the momentary exaltation fell from that woman of sorrows. "This but
makes my burden heavier, my responsibility greater," she wailed. "God help
me bear it!"

Thus passed that incident so trifling in itself and so misunderstood by
her. But it was never forgotten, and from time to time she would allude to
it as the sign which had been vouchsafed me and for which great should be
my thankfulness and my joy.

Save for that, in the four years that followed, time flowed an uneventful
course within the four walls of the big citadel--for beyond those four
walls I was never once permitted to set foot; and although from time to
time I heard rumours of doings in the town itself, of the affairs of the
State whereof I was by right of birth the tyrant, and of the greater
business of the big world beyond, yet so trained and schooled was I that I
had no great desire for a nearer acquaintance with that world.

A certain curiosity did at times beset me, spurred not so much by the
little that I heard as by things that I read in such histories as my
studies demanded I should read. For even the lives of saints, and Holy
Writ itself, afford their student glimpses of the world. But this
curiosity I came to look upon as a lure of the flesh, and to resist.
Blessed are they who are out of all contact with the world, since to them
salvation comes more easily; so I believed implicitly, as I was taught by