As I was approaching my eighteenth year there befell another incident,
which, trivial in itself, yet has its place in my development and so should
have its place within these confessions. Nor did I judge it trivial at the
time--nor were trivial the things that followed out of it--trivial though
it may seem to me to-day as I look back upon it through all the murk of
later life.

Giojoso, the seneschal, of whom I have spoken, had a son, a great raw-boned
lad whom he would have trained as an amanuensis, but who was one of
Nature's dunces out of which there is nothing useful to be made. He was
strong-limbed, however, and he was given odd menial duties to perform about
the castle. But these he shirked where possible, as he had shirked his
lessons in earlier days.

Now it happened that I was walking one spring morning--it was in May of
that year '44 of which I am now writing--on the upper of the three spacious
terraces that formed the castle garden. It was but an indifferently tended
place, and yet perhaps the more agreeable on that account, since Nature had
been allowed to have her prodigal, luxuriant way. It is true that the
great boxwood hedges needed trimming, and that weeds were sprouting between
the stones of the flights of steps that led from terrace to terrace; but
the place was gay and fragrant with wild blossoms, and the great trees
afforded generous shade, and the long rank grass beneath them made a
pleasant couch to lie on during the heat of the day in summer. The lowest
terrace of all was in better case. It was a well-planted and well-tended
orchard, where I got many a colic in my earlier days from a gluttony of
figs and peaches whose complete ripening I was too impatient to await.

I walked there, then, one morning quite early on the upper terrace