Now, therefore, all was once again well with our professor. His old friends hastened to gather round him, and found in his modest home a new attraction, in addition to those which had previously rendered his society precious to them. Old Calcagnini found the "prattling infant muse" to whom he had sent a kiss in her exile, grown into a lovely girl, on the eve of blossoming into womanhood, with talents and acquirements sufficient to make the reputation of a mature scholar. In truth, the apparition among them of this bright–eyed and bright–minded creature, enthusiastic in her love for that literature which had been the object and business of their lives, animated with the very spirit of the poesy of Greece and Rome, eloquent with the well–loved music of Homer's or Virgil's tones, which fell mended from her lips, talking their talk, interested in their discussions, and anxious to learn more of all, that it was so delightful a task to them to teach, seems nearly to have turned the learned heads of that knot of grey–beards, who frequented her father's house. They seem at a loss how to express their admiration in terms sufficiently glowing. Old Gregory Giraldi, writing amid the tortures of the gout, which kept him bed–ridden during the last ten years of his life, speaks of her as "a damsel talented beyond the nature of her sex, thoroughly skilled in Greek and Latin literature, and a miracle to all who hear her." Comparisons with Diotima, Aspasia, the Muses, Graces, and everything feminine that ever was wise, brilliant, or charming, were showered around her. If it be possible that the head of a youthful beauty should be turned by the flattery and admiration of grey–headed and gouty old gentlemen, expressed in the most Attic Greek, and purest Ciceronian Latin, that of Olympia could hardly have escaped. This chorus of admiration must, at all events, have been gratifying to the proud father. The home–coming, after his long wanderings, must have been a happy one. His appointment at the court, too, must have been a satisfactory assurance that no suspicion of heterodoxy had as yet arisen to injure him. Yet mischief from this source had been busy in Ferrara during his absence, and that in the innermost chambers of the palace. The priest had, as usual, thrust himself between the husband and the wife; and the Duchess Renée had become, on theological grounds, an object of suspicion to her husband, whose political relations with the Holy See made it expedient that he and his should enjoy a reputation of unblemished orthodoxy.