Among the towns visited by Morato during these years of exile, was Vercelli, in Piedmont; and there he formed a friendship with one who was destined to exercise an important influence over his future life and that of Olympia. This was Celio Secondo Curione, whose acts of overt dissidence from the Church had even then made him an object of persecution. Having become wholly alienated from Rome by the study of the Bible, and of certain of the writings of Melancthon, he was about escaping into Germany, when he was arrested, and thrown into prison by the Bishop of Ivrea. At the intercession of a relative, he was released, on condition of entering a monastery. There he finally made the breach between himself and the Church irreparable, by an act of audacity, which seems to have been more calculated to produce a theatrical and epigrammatic effect, than to bring about any useful result. Having quietly one day removed the relics from the high altar of the convent church, he installed the Bible in their place; thus indicating, more significantly probably than he intended, the tendency of the new Church then springing into existence, to substitute a new idolatry, less gross perhaps than that which it strove to supplant, but equally destined to impede for long ages the progress of mankind to a higher and purer theology. Having fled to escape the consequences of this daring practical protest, he committed, in Milan, about 1530, the yet more unpardonable outrage of marrying a wife. Being by this act finally cast adrift upon the world, with increased responsibilities and necessities, he sought to obtain wherewithal to live, by publicly teaching the learned languages and literature. He did this with such success, as to attain not only that, but a very wide–spread reputation also, under circumstances which made obscurity most desirable for his safety. Driven, accordingly, from his occupation by the pursuit of his enemies, and yielding to a strong desire to revisit his native Piedmont, he appears, while travelling in that direction, to have fallen in with Morato at Vercelli, and to have been received by his brother exile and scholar in his temporary dwelling.