About three leagues and a half from Turin, and at the foot of the Alps, was situated the town of Cirié, with its two parochial churches and an Augustine monastery. Higher up there stood an old castle named Cuori, and the family to which it belonged was called from it Curione or Curioni.[803] One of its members, Giacomino Curione, who lived at Cirié, had married Charlotte de Montrotier, lady of honor to Blanche, Duchess of Savoy, and sister to the chief equerry of the reigning duke. On the 1st of May, 1503, a son was born to them at Cirié; he was named Celio Secundo,[804] and was their twenty-third child.[805] He lost his mother as he came into the world, and his father, who had removed to Turin, and afterwards to Moncaglieri, where he had property, died when Celio was only nine years old. The elder Curione possessed a Bible, which in the hour of death he put into his son’s hands. That act was perhaps the cause of the love for Scripture by which the heir of the Curiones was afterwards distinguished: the depth of his filial piety made him look upon the book as a treasure before he knew the value of its contents. Celio having begun his education at Moncaglieri, went to Turin, where his maternal grandmother, Maddalena, lived. She received him into her house, where the anxious love of the venerable lady surrounded him with the tenderest care.[806] He is said to have dwelt on that pleasant hill which overlooks Turin, whence the summits of the Alps are visible, and whose base is washed by the slow and majestic waters of the Po.[807] Celio had applied with his whole heart to the study of the classical orators, poets, historians, and philosophers; when he reached his twentieth year he felt deeper longings, which literature was incapable of satisfying. The old Bible of his father could do this: a new world, superior to that of letters and philosophy,—the world of the spirit,—opened before his soul.