spiritual adviser, exerting over her a very considerable influence. She,
herself, had admitted that it was this Arcolano who had induced her to that
horrid traffic in my father's life and liberty which she was mercifully
spared from putting into effect.

"Messer Arcolano," he resumed after a pause, "has a good friend in
Piacenza, a pedagogue, a doctor of civil and canon law, a man who, he says,
is very learned and very pious, named Astorre Fifanti. I have heard of
this Fifanti, and I do not at all agree with Messer Arcolano. I have said
so. But your mother..." He broke off. "It is decided that you go to him
at once, to take up your study of the humanities under his tutelage, and
that you abide with him until you are of an age for ordination, which your
mother hopes will be very soon. Indeed, it is her wish that you should
enter the subdeaconate in the autumn, and your novitiate next year, to fit
you for the habit of St. Augustine."

He fell silent, adding no comment of any sort, as if he waited to hear what
of my own accord I might have to urge. But my mind was incapable of
travelling beyond the fact that I was to go out into the world to-morrow.

The circumstance that I should become a monk was no departure from the idea
to which I had been trained, although explicitly no more than my mere
priesthood had been spoken of. So I lay there without thinking of any
words in which to answer him.

Gervasio considered me steadily, and sighed a little. "Agostino," he said
presently, "you are upon the eve of taking a great step, a step whose
import you may never fully have considered. I have been your tutor, and
your rearing has been my charge. That charge I have faithfully carried out
as was ordained me, but not as I would have carried it out had I been free