I was a tall, strong youth, full of courage and handsome to the eye of women: I led a life noisy and joyous, and for ever in movement. I was what my father had been before me. So they all said. Only I liked to finger a book, and my father never had looked inside one, and out of remembrance of the belief of my mother I uncovered my head as I passed a church or saw a shrine, and to do this had not been in my father's habits. In these years I made a great deal of money--a great deal, at least, for a stroller--but it went as fast as it came. I was never a vicious man, nor a great gambler or drinker, yet my plump pieces soon took wing from my pocket, for I was very gay and I liked to play a lover's part. My life was a good life, that I know: as for the life of the rich and of the noble, I cannot tell what it is like, but I think it is of a surety more gloomy and mournful than mine. In Italy one wants so little. The air and the light, and a little red wine, and the warmth of the wind, and a handful of maize or of grapes, and an old guitar, and a niche to sleep in near a fountain that murmurs and sings to the mosses and marbles,--these are enough, these are happiness in Italy. And it is not difficult to have thus much, or was not so in those days. I was never very poor, but whenever money jingled in my purse I treated all the troop and half the town, and we laughed loud till daybreak. I was never aught save Pipistrello--Pipistrello the wrestler, who jumped and leaped, and lifted an ox from the ground as easily as other men lift a child. No doubt to the wise it seems a fool's life, to the holy a life impure. But I had been born for it: no other was possible to me; and when money rained upon me, if I could ease an aching heart, or make a sick lad the stouter for a hearty meal, or make a tiny child the gladder for a lapful of copper coins, or give a poor stray dog a friend and a bed of straw, or a belabored mule a helpful push to the wheels of his cart,--well, that was all the good a mountebank could look to do in this world, and one could go to sleep easy upon it.