Not alone of the companions of the Princes was he careful, but of the servants. It would seem that when Vittorino took over the “Casa Giocosa,” he found a whole troup of liveried menials ready to minister to the slightest wish of the young Princes. His first care was to send them all off, replacing them by a few trustworthy attendants, not numerous enough to make discipline difficult. He put porters at the gate, on whom he could rely, wishing to secure for his school the atmosphere of quiet, and work, and prayer, and order, and wholesome austerity in which the young souls confided to him might grow to their full perfection. The vicinity of a splendid court made his precautions all the more necessary. With the troops of servants disappeared the soft carpets, and luxurious couches, the gold and silver plate, and, above all, the rich foods which were playing such havoc with poor Lodovico’s figure—not to speak of anything else. Everything was to be plain and wholesome and abundant, but there was to be no luxury. Had not the Blessed Giovanni warned Madonna Bartolommea against rearing her children too softly? “Rear them hardily” had been his advice. “Teach them to eat bitter food and things unpleasant,” so shall they be able to say “we care not” when life is hard with them in the years to come. The little picture-children for whom Dominici pleads, that Madonna Bartolommea’s boys and girls may make friendship with them early, were not forgotten by Vittorino. Be sure, when, at his request, Madonna Paola sent her painter to cover the walls of the study-halls and galleries with “frescoes of children playing,” the tiny Jesukin, and dear Saint John, who was as an elder brother to Him, were to be seen there, playing together—in the carpenter’s shop, mayhap, when Elizabeth had taken her boy to Nazareth to visit his small cousin, or by the covered well under the palm-tree in Zachary’s garden, when the sweet spring days had called Mary and her bambino to the hill-country. Poor Lodovico must have felt the change rather hard at first. He had been accustomed to get up whatever time he liked, do as little as he pleased, and have his interest aroused by nothing except questions of eating and drinking. One really thinks there must have been something diseased in poor Lodovico’s extraordinary appetite. Our ancestors would have seen in him a fellow victim of Cathal MacFinguine, King of Munster, in whom there entered the Demon of Gluttony through eating the apples, whereon the Scholar of Fergal, son of Maelduin, had put his heathen charms, “so that the demon abode in the throat of Cathal, to the ruin of the men of Munster during three half-years; and it is likely he would have ruined Ireland during another half-year.”