At this point we may surely hazard a further conjecture. Bacon tells us that in those days it was the study of law, ecclesiastical and civil, rather than of theology, which opened the way to honour and preferment in the Church.[26] Now Paris was not more eminently and distinctly the seat of arts than Bologna was the school of laws.[27] May not Michael Scot have passed from the French to the Italian University? Such a conjecture would be worth little were it not for the support which it undoubtedly receives from credible tradition. Boccaccio in one of his tales[28] mentions Michael Scot, and tells how he used to live in Bologna. Many of the commentators on the _Divine Comedy_ of Dante dwell on the theme, and enrich it with superstitious wonders.[29] It would be difficult to find a period in the scholar’s life which suits better with such a residence than that we are now considering. On all accounts it seems likely that he left Paris for Bologna, and found in the latter city a highly favourable opening, which led directly to the honours and successes of his after-life. He was now to leave the schools and enter a wider sphere, not without the promise of high and enduring fame. A child of the mist and the hill, he had come from the deep woods and wild outland life of the Scottish Border to what was already no inconsiderable position. He knew Paris, not, need it be said, the gay capital of modern days, but Paris of the closing years of the twelfth century, _Lutetia Parisiorum_: her low-browed houses of wood and mud; her winding streets, noisome even by day, and by night still darker and more perilous; her vast Latin Quarter, then far more preponderant than now—a true cosmopolis, where fur-clad barbarians from the home of the north wind sharpened wits with the Latin races haply trained in southern schools by some keen-browed Moor or Jew. And Paris knew him, watched his course, applauded his success, crowned his fame by that coveted title of _Master_, which he shared with many others, but which the world of letters made peculiarly his own by creating for him a singular and individual propriety in it. From Paris we may follow him in fancy to Bologna, yet it is not hard to believe he must have left half his heart behind, enchained in that remarkable devotion which Lutetia could so well inspire in her children.[30] Bologna might be, as we have represented it, the gate to a new Eden, that of Scot’s Italian and Spanish life, yet how could he enter it without casting many a longing glance behind to the Paradise he had quitted for ever when he left the banks of the Seine? CHAPTER II SCOT AT THE COURT OF SICILY