gh. In the courtyard whither
she descended to make her way to the outhouse where the two were lodged,
she met Fra Gervasio, who was astir before her.

"The friar?" she cried anxiously, filled already with forebodings. "The
holy man?"

Gervasio stood before her, pale and trembling. "You are too late,
Madonna. Already he is gone."

She observed his agitation now, and beheld in it a reflection of her
own, springing from the selfsame causes. "Oh, it was a sign indeed!"
she exclaimed. "And you have come to realize it, too, I see." Next, in a
burst of gratitude that was almost pitiful upon such slight foundation,
"Oh, blessed Agostino!" she cried out.

Then the momentary exaltation fell from that woman of sorrows. "This but
makes my burden heavier, my responsibility greater," she wailed. "God
help me bear it!"

Thus passed that incident so trifling in itself and so misunderstood by
her. But it was never forgotten, and from time to time she would allude
to it as the sign which had been vouchsafed me and for which great
should be my thankfulness and my joy.

Save for that, in the four years that followed, time flowed an
uneventful course within the four walls of the big citadel--for beyond
those four walls I was never once permitted to set foot; and although
from time to time I heard rumours of doings in the town itself, of the
affairs of the State whereof I was by right of birth the tyrant, and
of the greater business of the big world beyond, yet so trained and
schooled was I that I had no great desire for a nearer acquaintance with
that world.

A certain curiosity did at times beset me, spurred not so much by the
little that I heard as by things that I read in such histories as my
studies demanded I should read. For even the lives of saints, and
Holy Writ itself, afford their student glimpses of the world. But this
curiosity I came to look upon as a lure of the flesh, and to resist.
Blessed are they who are out of all contact with the world, since to
them salvation comes more easily; so I believed implicitly, as I was
taught by my mother and by Fra Gervasio at my mother's bidding.

And as the years passed under such influences as had been at work upon
me from the cradle, influences which had known no check save that brief
one afforded by Gino Falcone, I became perforce devout and pious from
very inclination.

Joyous transports were afforded me by the study of the life of that
Saint Luigi of the noble Mantuan House