pity--enter the Church because they are driven to it in youth by
ill-advised parents. I would not have you one of these, my son."

I stared at him, my amazement ever growing. "Do you... do you think I am
in danger of it?" I asked.

"That is a question you must answer for yourself. No man can know what
is in another's heart. I have trained you as I was bidden train you. I
have seen you devout, increasing in piety, and yet..." He paused, and
looked at me again. "It may be that this is no more than the fruit
of your training; it may be that your piety and devotion are purely
intellectual. It is very often so. Men know the precepts of religion
as a lawyer knows the law. It no more follows out of that that they are
religious--though they conceive that it does--than it follows that a
lawyer is law-abiding. It is in the acts of their lives that we must
seek their real natures, and no single act of your life, Agostino, has
yet given sign that the call is in your heart.

"To-day, for instance, at what is almost your first contact with the
world, you indulge your human feelings to commit a violence; that you
did not kill is as much an accident as that you broke Rinolfo's leg. I
do not say that you did a very sinful thing. In a worldly youth of your
years the provocation you received would have more than justified
your action. But not in one who aims at a life of humility and
self-forgetfulness such as the priesthood imposes."

"And yet," said I, "I heard you tell my mother below stairs that I was
nearer sainthood than either of you."

He smiled sadly, and shook his head. "They were rash words, Agostino. I
mistook ignorance for purity--a common error. I have pondered it since,
and my reflection brings me to utter what in this household amounts to
treason."

"I do not understand," I confessed.

"My duty to your mother I have discharged more faithfully perhaps than I
had the right to do. My duty to my God I am discharging now, although
to you I may rather appear as an advocatus diaboli. This duty is to warn
you; to bid you consider well the step you are to take.

"Listen, Agostino. I am speaking to you out of the bitter experience of
a very cruel life. I would not have you tread the path I have trodden.
It seldom leads to happiness in this world or the next; it seldom leads
anywhere but straight to Hell."

He paused, and I looked into his haggard face in utter stupefaction
to hear such words from the lips of one whom I h