and he has still a part to play, for his own sake and for the sake of
another, as shall soon appear more clearly.

CHAPTER II.

Orsino Saracinesca's education was almost completed. It had been of the
modern kind, for his father had early recognised that it would be a
disadvantage to the young man in after life if he did not follow the
course of study and pass the examinations required of every Italian
subject who wishes to hold office in his own country. Accordingly,
though he had not been sent to public schools, Orsino had been regularly
entered since his childhood for the public examinations and had passed
them all in due order, with great difficulty and indifferent credit.
After this preliminary work he had been at an English University for
four terms, not with any view to his obtaining a degree after completing
the necessary residence, but in order that he might perfect himself in
the English language, associate with young men of his own age and
social standing, though of different nationality, and acquire that final
polish which is so highly valued in the human furniture of society's
temples.

Orsino was not more highly gifted as to intelligence than many young men
of his age and class. Like many of them he spoke English admirably,
French tolerably, and Italian with a somewhat Roman twang. He had
learned a little German and was rapidly forgetting it again; Latin and
Greek had been exhibited to him as dead languages, and he felt no more
inclination to assist in their resurrection than is felt by most boys in
our day. He had been taught geography in the practical, continental
manner, by being obliged to draw maps from memory. He had been
instructed in history, not by parallels, but as it were by tangents, a
method productive of odd results, and he had advanced just far enough in
the study of mathematics to be thoroughly confused by the terms
"differentiation" and "integration." Besides these subjects, a multitude
of moral and natural sciences had been made to pass in a sort of
panorama before his intellectual vision, including physics, chemistry,
logic, rhetoric, ethics and political economy, with a view to
cultivating in him the spirit of the age. The Ministry of Public
Instruction having decreed that the name of God shall be for ever
eliminated from all modern books in use in Italian schools and
universities, Orsino's religious instruction had been imparted at home
and had at least the advantage of being