The two scholars parted. Curione in Piedmont soon found that the hostility of his family, outraged by his heretical manifestations, was such as to make it necessary for him to seek safety in obscurity. And this he succeeded in finding as tutor to the children of a nobleman, who lived in the country, near Turin. Here, however, his zeal for the truth did not allow him long rest for the sole of his foot. For chancing once to be present while an itinerant Dominican was preaching in a neighbouring church, and hearing him falsify in the course of his sermon some extracts from the writings of some of the German reformers, he publicly interrupted him to correct his statement. Seizure, imprisonment in the dungeons of the neighbouring city of Turin, with the prospect of a trial before the ecclesiastical authorities, which would be sure to end in a capital condemnation, were the results, as might have been anticipated, of this audacious testimony to the truth. Having, by almost miraculous good fortune, succeeded in escaping from his prison, he fled to Pavia, and there obtained a chair in the University. The decree of the Senate of that city, conferring on him this employment, is dated 9th of October, 1538.[45] And that such a body should have made such an appointment, just after the candidate for it had escaped from imprisonment for heresy in a neighbouring city, is a curious instance of the utter severance in all respects of one community from another, which a few miles of intervening territory could in those days effect. It having been soon discovered, however, adds Tiraboschi, who the new professor was, he would have been arrested, if his pupils, already appreciating their teacher at his worth, had not formed themselves into a bodyguard for him, which for three years ensured his safety despite the efforts of the ecclesiastical authorities to get possession of his person. And here we have another very remarkable indication of the strange looseness of the bonds which held society together at that period; and also, as it may be fairly argued, of the general reluctance of the Italians to accept these first manifestations of inquisitorial action, or to lend them, if it could possibly be avoided, the assistance of the secular arm. At length, however, urgent representations from Rome to the government of Milan compelled the University senate of Pavia to advise Curione to escape from their city, while it was yet possible to do so. [Sidenote: CURIONE'S STORY.] He was thus thrown once again upon the wide world. And it was then that his friend Morato, who had by that time been restored to his home and position at Ferrara, wrote to him to offer him an asylum under his own roof. "Come to us;" writes the Ferrarese pedagogue to his fellow–labourer; "you will find your place at our hearth vacant. And especially there is a corner for you in my library, where you may indulge _ad libitum_ in the united blessings of solitude, silence, peace, and oblivion."