diverting in his conversation, and given to the telling of stories and
strange occurrences well worth notice. He told me many things about
familiar spirits, but what part of these were true I know not; but
assuredly tales of this sort, wonderful in themselves and artfully put
together, delighted me marvellously.

"But what chiefly deserved condemnation in my father was that he brought
up certain other youths with the intention of leaving to them his goods in
case I should die; which thing, in sooth, meant nothing less than the
exposure of myself to open danger through plots of the parents of the boys
aforesaid, on account of the prize offered. Over this affair my father and
my mother quarrelled grievously, and finally decided to live apart.
Whereupon my mother, stricken by this mental vexation, and troubled at
intervals with what I deem to have been an hysterical affection, fell one
day full on the back of her neck, and struck her head upon the floor,
which was composed of tiles. It was two or three hours before she came
round, and indeed her recovery was little short of miraculous, especially
as at the end of her seizure she foamed much at the mouth.

"In the meantime I altered the whole drift of this tragedy by a pretended
adoption of the religious life, for I became for a time a member of the
mendicant Franciscan brotherhood. But at the beginning of my twenty-first
year[22] I went to the Gymnasium at Pavia, whereupon my father, feeling my
absence, was softened towards me, and a reconciliation between him and my
mother took place.

"Before this time I had learnt music, my mother and even my father having
secretly given me money for the same; my father likewise paid for my
instruction in dialectics. I became so proficient in this art that I
taught it to certain other youths before I went to the University. Thus he
sent me there endowed with the means of winning an honest living; but he
never once spake a word to me concerning this matter, bearing himself
always towards me in considerate, kindly, and pious wise.

"For the residue of his days (and he lived on well-nigh four more years)
his life was a sad one, as if he would fain let it be known to the world
how much he loved me.[23] Moreover, when by the working of fate I returned
home while he lay sick, he besought, he commanded, nay he even forced me,
all unwilling, to depart thence, what though he knew his last hour was
nigh, for the reason that the plague was in th