At all events, Vittorino took Lodovico in hand at once. He was only allowed to eat at mealtimes; but at first his meals were set at short intervals, and there was no stint on the quantity of food; which, however, was as plain as possible, so that the appetite should not be over-stimulated. Gradually, the meals became fewer, and Vittorino, discovering that Lodovico’s voracity was as much the result of an empty mind and starved interests as anything else, had the inspiration to accompany them with little entertainments. He had singers, and musicians, and storytellers placed in the dining-hall; and, lo! Lodovico, listening to them, forgot his plate, for the nonce, and did not notice the loss of it, when an attendant, on a sign from Vittorino, bore it quietly away. With Carlo, the second son, the master pursued quite a different plan. Carlo was growing too fast, and spending his energies too rapidly in the ardour which he put into his games. Vittorino saw to it that the boy should have as much to eat as he wished at meal times. Between meals he had permission to eat, too—but only bread. His attention to the food of his pupils and to their bodily welfare give the key to Vittorino’s whole educational system. The “Mens sana in corpore sano,” is as an educational ideal, not the exclusive possession of the Greeks. I have tried to show how vitally it influenced education in the Middle Ages; but, undoubtedly, Vittorino found new ardour for his pursuit of it in the image of the “Academy,” which his Greek studies had conjured up for him, and kept constantly before his mind. But the little boys and girls, for whom Vittorino was going to assume responsibility, had something more than a body and a mind to be developed. They had each an immortal soul. The recognition of that fact must, logically, alter any system of education, not founded on it, into something very different. And so the Christian school of Mantua, forming colonists for this world, and citizens for heaven, was something essentially different from the Platonic Academy, however much it may have borrowed from it. The strengthening and developing of _body_, and _mind_, and _soul_—that is, in a few words, what the whole system of Vittorino aimed at. It is in the harmonious ordering of the different studies and exercises, which he chose for the perfecting of the three parts of men, that the chief excellence of the “Casa Giocosa” consists. “You are rearing your children for God,” the Blessed Giovanni reminded Madonna Bartolommea. Vittorino never forgot this for a moment, nor did he ever allow his pupils to forget that they had been “created and placed” in this world by God, “to know Him, love Him, and serve Him, and by that means to gain Everlasting Life.”