self-conceit would have added charm to his argument, but these notes
were lacking; clearly, logically, unanswerably, he met each question,
convincing without emotion and hastening from the gay court, of which
these intellectual tourneys were the delight, to the welcome seclusion
of the convent. If he seemed to have missed a real childhood,--its
follies, its innocent pleasures, its winsome affections,--so later, the
temptations that would naturally beset a career so extraordinary fell
harmlessly away from him, for a passion for knowledge burned within him,
consuming all ignoble motives and keeping this young scholar, in friar's
robes, in marvelous singleness of heart, in the midst of a flattering
and luxurious court.

Always he had been a law to himself, both morally and intellectually;
never before did it seem that genius had been cast in a mold so orderly
and calm. In that state of intense concentration which was his habitual
mood, he accomplished without apparent effort the things for which
others paid by a life-time of struggle; and morally he had no visible
combats, not seeming to be even reached by the things which tempted
other men. His wants were fewer than the simplest rule of his convent
allowed, and it seemed less that he had triumphed over the usual earthly
temptations than that he had been created abnormally free from them that
his whole strength might spend itself in the solving of problems. In a
certain sense he stood mysteriously alone, though his friends were many
and devoted and among the wise and venerated of the earth; but there was
always a door closed to them beyond the affection which he returned
them. "Always," he said once, "we veil our faces": yet none doubted his
sincerity.

From time to time, as the years sped, some echo of the jealousy which
his phenomenal success and the boldness of his bearing naturally evoked,
penetrated to the cloisters of the Servi; and more than once there had
been a denunciation to the Inquisition to discuss; some one in authority
had found fault with his theological opinions and denounced him for his
reading of a passage in Genesis, upon which he based his argument--the
affair was grave indeed.

"Ah, the pity of it--the pity of it!" Fra Giulio had exclaimed. "They
should show mercy--he is still so young a man!"

"Ay, young enough to need much discipline," bravely muttered a friar
who dared to disbelieve in their prodigy.

"Silence!" commanded Father Gianmaria, wh