hat to-morrow you leave Mondolfo."

A faint excitement began to stir in me. To leave Mondolfo--to go
out into that world of which I had read so much; to mingle with my
fellow-man, with youths of my own age, perhaps with maidens like
Luisina, to see cities and the ways of cities; here indeed was matter
for excitement. Yet it was an excitement not altogether pleasurable;
for with my very natural curiosity, and with my eagerness to have it
gratified, were blended certain fears imbibed from the only quality of
reading that had been mine.

The world was an evil place in which temptations seethed, and through
which it was difficult to come unscathed. Therefore, I feared the world
and the adventuring beyond the shelter of the walls of the castle of
Mondolfo; and yet I desired to judge for myself the evil of which I
read, the evil which in moments of doubt I even permitted myself to
question.

My reasoning followed the syllogism that God being good and God having
created the world, it was not possible that the creation should be evil.
It was well enough to say that the devil was loose in it. But that was
not to say that the devil had created it; and it would be necessary to
prove this ere it could be established that it was evil in itself--as
many theologians appeared to seek to show--and a place to be avoided.

Such was the question that very frequently arose in my mind, ultimately
to be dismissed as a lure of Satan's to imperil my poor soul. It battled
for existence now amid my fears; and it gained some little ascendancy.

"And whither am I to go?" I asked. "To Pavia, or to the University of
Bologna?"

"Had my advice been heeded," said he, "one or the other would have been
your goal. But your mother took counsel with Messer Arcolano."

He shrugged, and there was contempt in the lines of his mouth. He
distrusted Arcolano, the regular cleric who was my mother's confessor
and 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 you