to Leocadia under cover of his hand, ogling her what time she simpered.
Once or twice Monna Giuliana flashed him an unfriendly glance, and this
I accounted natural, deeming that she resented this lack of attention to
the erudite dissertation of her husband.

But as for the others, they were attentive, as I have said, and even
Messer Caro, who at the time--as I gathered then--was engaged upon
a translation of Virgil into Tuscan, and who, therefore, might be
accounted something of an authority, held his peace and listened what
time the doctor reasoned and discoursed.

Fifanti's mean, sycophantic air fell away from him as by magic. Warmed
by his subject and his enthusiasm he seemed suddenly ennobled, and I
found him less antipathic; indeed, I began to see something admirable in
the man, some of that divine quality that only deep culture and learning
can impart.

I conceived that now, at last, I held the explanation of how it came to
pass that so distinguished a company frequented his house and gathered
on such familiar terms about his board.

And I began to be less amazed at the circumstance that he should possess
for wife so beautiful and superb a creature as Madonna Giuliana. I
thought that I obtained glimpses of the charm which that elderly man
might be able to exert upon a fine and cultured young nature with
aspirations for things above the commonplace.

CHAPTER II. HUMANITIES

As the days passed and swelled into weeks, and these, in their turn,
accumulated into months, I grew rapidly learned in worldly matters at
Doctor Fifanti's house.

The curriculum I now pursued was so vastly different from that which my
mother had bidden Fra Gervasio to set me, and my acquaintance with the
profane writers advanced so swiftly once it was engaged upon, that I
acquired knowledge as a weed grows.

Fifanti flung into strange passions when he discovered the extent of my
ignorance and the amazing circumstance that whilst Fra Gervasio had made
of me a fluent Latin scholar, he had kept me in utter ignorance of the
classic writers, and almost in as great an ignorance of history itself.
This the pedant set himself at once to redress, and amongst the earliest
works he gave me as preparation were Latin translations of Thucydides
and Herodotus which I devoured--especially the glowing pages of the
latter--at a speed that alarmed my tutor.

But mere studiousness was not my spur, as he imagined. I was enthralled
by the novelt