library a
copy of that author's tales.

"Has that wicked priest bidden you to read them?" she inquired, 'twixt
seriousness and mockery, her dark eyes upon me in one of those glances
that never left me easy.

I told her what had passed; and with a sigh and a comment that I would
get an indigestion from so much mental nourishment as I was consuming,
she led me to the little library to find the book.

Messer Fifanti's was a very choice collection of works, and every one
in manuscript; for the doctor was something of an idealist, and greatly
averse to the printing-press and the wide dissemination of books to
which it led. Out of his opposition to the machine grew a dislike to
its productions, which he denounced as vulgar; and not even their
comparative cheapness and the fact that, when all was said, he was a man
of limited means, would induce him to harbour a single volume that was
so produced.

Along the shelves she sought, and finally drew down four heavy tomes.
Turning the pages of the first, she found there, with a readiness that
argued a good acquaintance with the work, the story of Abraam the Jew,
which I desired to read as it had been set down. She bade me read it
aloud, which I did, she seated in the window, listening to me.

At first I read with some constraint and shyness, but presently warming
to my task and growing interested, I became animated and vivacious in my
manner, so that when I ceased I saw her sitting there, her hands clasped
about one knee, her eyes upon my face, her lips parted a little, the
very picture of interest.

And with that it happened that we established a custom, and very often,
almost daily, after dinner, we would repair together to the library, and
I--who hitherto had no acquaintance with any save Latin works--began to
make and soon to widen my knowledge of our Tuscan writers. We varied our
reading. We dipped into our poets. Dante we read, and Petrarca, and both
we loved, though better than the works of either--and this for the sake
of the swift movement and action that is in his narrative, though his
melodies, I realized, were not so pure--the Orlando of Ariosto.

Sometimes we would be joined by Fifanti himself; but he never stayed
very long. He had an old-fashioned contempt for writings in what he
called the "dialettale," and he loved the solemn injuvenations of
the Latin tongue. Soon, as he listened, he would begin to yawn, and
presently grunt and rise and depart, flinging a co