From this time life indeed began for me. I wept often; I felt the barb of a real remorse; when I passed a crucifix on the road I trembled with true terror and penitence; but I fled away, always. I drew my girdle closer about my spangled coat, and, despite all my remorse, I was happy. When I was very, very far away I wrote to my mother, and she understood, poor soul! that there were no means of forcing me back to her. Children are egotists: childhood has little feeling. When the child suffers he thirsts for his mother, but when he is happy, alas! he thinks little and rarely about her. I was very happy, full of force and of success: the men kept their word and taught me all their tricks, all their exploits. Soon I surpassed my teachers in address and in temerity. I soon became the glory of their band. In the summertime we wandered over the vast Lombard plains and the low Tuscan mountains; in winter we displayed our prowess in Rome, in Naples, in Palermo; we loitered wherever the sun was warm or the people liked to laugh. From time to time I thought of my mother: I sent her money. I shivered a little when I saw a Madonna, for all Madonnas have the smile that our mother has for our infancy. I thought of her, but I never went home. I was Pipistrello the champion-wrestler. I was a young Hercules, with a spangled tunic in lieu of a lion-skin. I was a thousand years, ten thousand leagues, away from the child of Orte. God is just. It is just that I die here, for in my happy years I forgot my mother. I lived in the sunlight--before the crowds, the nervous crowds of Italy--singing, shouting, leaping, triumphing; and I forgot my mother alone in the old chamber above the Tiber--quite alone, for my grandam was dead. That I have slain what I have slain--that is nothing. I would do the same thing again had I to live my life again. Yes, without pause or mercy would I do it. But my mother--she has lived alone, and she is mad. That is my crime.