him; God hath been merciful beyond thy
prayer, my daughter."

VII

Fra Paolo Sarpi--this friar so grave and great and unemotional--had been
since he had entered the convent in his precocious boyhood the central
figure, fascinating the interest of his community by the marvel of his
progress, so that those who had been his teachers stood reverently
aside, before he had attained to manhood, recognizing gifts beyond their
leading which had already won homage from the savants of Europe and
crowned the order of the Servi with unexampled honors. The element of
the unusual in the young Paolo's endowments had transformed this
Benjamin of the convent into a hero, and surrounded the calm flow of his
studious life with a halo of romance for these Servite friars; yet the
good Fra Giulio in those early days, having little learning wherewith to
estimate his progress and watching over him like a father, had been
grieved at his strange placidity. "He sorely needeth some touch of
emotion," he said yearningly; "methinks I love the lad as if he were
mine own son, and I feel something lacking in his life."

"Fret not the lad needlessly with those fanciful notions of thine," Fra
Gianmaria had retorted with much asperity. "It is the most marvelous
piece of mental mechanism that I have ever dreamed. Already he hath
attained to larger knowledge than thou, with thy gray hairs, canst
comprehend."

Fra Giulio had crossed himself devoutly, as if confessing to some
earthliness. "I measure not my simple mind with that of a genius, my
brother; for so God hath endowed our lad. Yet it may be that He meaneth
man to garner other blessings besides knowledge. We received him as a
child into our fold, and we are responsible for his development. But his
condition is not normal."

"Genius is abnormal," Fra Gianmaria had responded shortly.

"He hath no wish but for this ceaseless mental labor; all natural
youthful fancies, all joy in the things of beauty--for these he careth
naught."

The elder friar's troubled utterance had stirred no tremor in his
companion's stern reply. "Thou and I, my brother, have attained by
penances and years of abnegation to that mood which hath been granted
the boy as a gift to fit him for the cloister life. It were small
kindness to implant a struggle of which he knows not the beginnings."

And now, after all these years, through which the good Fra Giulio had
watched this son of his affections, whom he loved with a love