of the day, from my rising to my going to bed, which was not passed with
Aurelia.

To make the full import of this plain to the reader I must particularise
to some extent. My own rooms, I have explained, were in the same house,
two storeys below the Lanfranchi apartment. In them I was served with my
chocolate by old Nonna the servant, and was understood to leave them at
seven o'clock in the morning and not to return until midday, when I
dined with my hosts. The afternoons were my own. I was at liberty to
take horse exercise--and I kept two saddle-horses for the purpose--or to
make parties of pleasure with such of my fellow-students as were
agreeable to me. At six I supped with Aurelia alone, and at seven I was
supposed to retire--either to my own room for study and bed, or into the
town upon my private pleasures. These, I say, were the rules laid down
by Aurelia and her husband at the beginning of my residence in Padua. By
almost imperceptible degrees they were relaxed, by other degrees equally
hard to measure they were almost wholly altered.

The first to go was the practice of taking my chocolate abed. One
morning Nonna was late, and I rose without it. The same thing happened
more than twice, so then I went upstairs to find out what had hindered
her. There I found my Aurelia fresh from Mass and market, drinking her
morning coffee. Explanations, apologies, what-not, ensued; she invited
me to share her repast. From that time onwards I never broke my fast
otherwise than with her. So was it with other rules of intercourse. The
doctor was a machine in the ordering of his life. His chocolate at six,
his clothes at eight; he left the house at nine and returned at noon. He
left it again at two in the afternoon and returned at nine in the
evening; he supped; he went to bed on the stroke of ten. Except on
Sundays, high festivals, the first, the middle, and the last day of