Exquisite, fragrant, piteous Aurelia! Is it wonderful that I loved her?
And who was I--O heaven! What sort of lover was I to disturb her sweetly
ordered life? To that I must next address myself, cost me what it may.




CHAPTER III

MY DANGEROUS PROGRESS


I was fairly diligent during my year of study at Padua, fairly punctual
in attendance at my classes and lectures, fairly regular in my letter-
writing home. I acquired no vices, though there were plenty to be got,
was not a wine-bibber, a spendthrift, nor a rake. I was too snug in the
Casa Lanfranchi to be tempted astray, and any truantry of mine from the
round of my tasks led me back to Aurelia and love. To beat up the low
quarters of the town, to ruffle in the taverns and chocolate houses with
sham gentlemen, half frocked abbes and rips; to brawl and haggle with
vile persons and their bullies, set cocks a-fighting or rattle the dice-
box in the small hours--what were these pleasures to me, who had Aurelia
to be with? From the first she had taken her duties to heart, to mother
me, to keep me out of harm's way, to maintain her husband's credit by
making sure of mine. These things she set herself to do with a generous
zest which proved her undoing. Slowly, and from the purest of motives,
her influence upon me, her intercourse with me grew and spread. Slowly
the hours I spent with her extended--unperceived by her, exquisitely
perceived by me--until, at the date to which I am now come, near a year
after my entering the university, I may say there was not a spare moment