“No, there was merely an absence, so far as they were concerned, of any other idea. I think they meant justly, and assuredly they meant kindly by me. I grew in years, and the time came when I was to begin my studies. It was my uncle’s influence that placed me in the Seminary of the Salute, and there I repaid his care by the utmost diligence. But it was not the theological studies that I loved, it was the mathematics and their practical application, and among the classics I loved best the poets and the historians. Yes, I can see that I was always a mundane spirit, and some of those in charge of me at once divined it, I think. They used to take us to walk,--you have seen the little creatures in their priest’s gowns, which they put on when they enter the school, with a couple of young priests at the head of the file,--and once, for an uncommon pleasure, they took us to the Arsenal, and let us see the shipyards and the museum. You know the wonderful things that are there: the flags and the guns captured from the Turks; the strange weapons of all devices; the famous suits of armor. I came back half-crazed; I wept that I must leave the place. But I set to work the best I could to carve out in wood an invention which the model of one of the antique galleys had suggested to me. They found it,--nothing can be concealed outside of your own breast in such a school,--and they carried me with my contrivance before the superior. He looked kindly but gravely at me: ‘My son,’ said he, ‘do you wish to be a priest?’ ‘Surely, reverend father,’ I answered in alarm, ‘why not?’ ‘Because these things are not for priests. Their thoughts must be upon other things. Consider well of it, my son, while there is yet time,’ he said, and he addressed me a long and serious discourse upon the life on which I was to enter. He was a just and conscientious and affectionate man; but every word fell like burning fire in my heart. At the end, he took my poor plaything, and thrust it down among the coals of his _scaldino_. It made the scaldino smoke, and he bade me carry it out with me, and so turned again to his book. “My mother was by this time dead, but I could hardly have gone to her, if she had still been living. ‘These things are not for priests!’ kept repeating itself night and day in my brain. I was in despair, I was in a fury to see my uncle. I poured out my heart to him, and tried to make him understand the illusions and vain hopes in which I had lived. He received coldly my sorrow and the reproaches which I did not spare him; he bade me consider my inclinations as so many temptations to be overcome for the good of my soul and the glory of God. He warned me against the scandal of attempting to withdraw now from the path marked out for me. I said that I never would be a priest. ‘And what will you do?’ he asked. Alas! what could I do? I went back to my prison, and in due course I became a priest.