ction in which he held me.

And, meanwhile, as I grew in grace of spirit, so too did I grow in
grace of body, waxing tall and very strong, which would have been nowise
surprising but that those nurtured as was I are seldom lusty. The mind
feeding overmuch upon the growing body is apt to sap its strength
and vigour, besides which there was the circumstance that I continued
throughout those years a life almost of confinement, deprived of all the
exercises by which youth is brought to its fine flower of strength.

As I was approaching my eighteenth year there befell another incident,
which, trivial in itself, yet has its place in my development and so
should have its place within these confessions. Nor did I judge it
trivial at the time--nor were trivial the things that followed out
of it--trivial though it may seem to me to-day as I look back upon it
through all the murk of later life.

Giojoso, the seneschal, of whom I have spoken, had a son, a great
raw-boned lad whom he would have trained as an amanuensis, but who was
one of Nature's dunces out of which there is nothing useful to be made.
He was strong-limbed, however, and he was given odd menial duties to
perform about the castle. But these he shirked where possible, as he had
shirked his lessons in earlier days.

Now it happened that I was walking one spring morning--it was in May
of that year '44 of which I am now writing--on the upper of the
three spacious terraces that formed the castle garden. It was but an
indifferently tended place, and yet perhaps the more agreeable on that
account, since Nature had been allowed to have her prodigal, luxuriant
way. It is true that the great boxwood hedges needed trimming, and that
weeds were sprouting between the stones of the flights of steps that led
from terrace to terrace; but the place was gay and fragrant with wild
blossoms, and the great trees afforded generous shade, and the long rank
grass beneath them made a pleasant couch to lie on during the heat of
the day in summer. The lowest terrace of all was in better case. It was
a well-planted and well-tended orchard, where I got many a colic in my
earlier days from a gluttony of figs and peaches whose complete ripening
I was too impatient to await.

I walked there, then, one morning quite early on the upper terrace
immediately under the castle wall, and alternately I read from the De
Civitate Dei which I had brought with me, alternately mused upon the
matter of my rea