longing;--and my
mother destined me to a notary's desk, and wished me to be shut there
all my life, pen in hand, sowing the seeds of all the hatreds, of all
the crimes, of all the sorrows of mankind, lighting up the flames of
rage and of greed in human souls for an acre of ground, for a roll of
gold! She wished to make me a notary's clerk! I gazed at these men who
seemed to me so happy--these slender, agile, vigorous creatures in their
skins that shone like the skins of green snakes, in their broidered,
glittering, spangled vests, in their little velvet caps with the white
plume in each. "Take me! take me!" I shrieked to them; and the old king
of the troop looked hard at me, and when their games were finished
crossed the cord that marked their arena and threw his strong arms about
me, and cried, "Body of Christ! you are little Pippo!" For he had been
my father's mate. To be brief, when the little band left Orte I went
with them.

It was wickedly done, for my poor mother slept, knowing nothing, when in
the dusk before daybreak I slipped through the bars of the casement and
noiselessly dropped on to a raft in the river below, and thence joined
my new friends. It was wickedly done; but I could not help it. Fate was
stronger than I.

The old man did not disturb himself as to whether what he had encouraged
me to do was ill or well. He foresaw in me an athlete who would do him
honor and make the ducats ring merrier in his purse. Besides, I had cost
him nothing.

From this time life indeed began for me. I wept often; I felt the barb
of a real remorse; when I passed a crucifix on the road I trembled with
true terror and penitence; but I fled away, always. I drew my girdle
closer about my spangled coat, and, despite all my remorse, I was happy.
When I was very, very far away I wrote to my mother, and she understood,
poor soul! that there were no means of forcing me back to her. Children
are egotists: childhood has little feeling. When the child suffers he
thirsts for his mother, but when he is happy, alas! he thinks little and
rarely about her.

I was very happy, full of force and of success: the men kept their word
and taught me all their tricks, all their exploits. Soon I surpassed my
teachers in address and in temerity. I soon became the glory of their
band. In the summertime we wandered over the vast Lombard plains and the
low Tuscan mountains; in winter we displayed our prowess in Rome, in
Naples, in Palermo; we loite