As a child he was apprenticed to a cobbler. There, bending over his work on the pavement outside the shop-door, his blue eyes and curly fair hair, his rosy cheeks, his winning smile, his precocious retorts, attracted the most favourable comment from the passers-by and secured him an unfailing supply of chocolates and cigarettes. People liked him so much that he quickly learned not only how to mend shoes but a good many other things which they were anxious to teach him. His grown-up friends vied with one another for a place in his affections and a certain scandalous affair with knives, which somehow or other got into the daily press where it had no business to be, put the seal on his reputation in the quarter. "That boy will go far!" the old men and women used to say. "Only look at his blue eyes. Blessed the mother that bore him, whoever she was"--for nobody even pretended to know. They were right; as old folks are apt to be. The victor in the disreputable affray happened to be a gentleman of middle age, a distinguished ornament of the Black Hand. No happier fate could have been devised for Giustino than to live under the patronage of such an individual. He took charge of the little fellow, and was not slow in discovering that his protege possessed not only a muscular framework and ready wit, but the malice, the concentrated ruthlessness and rapacity of fifty devils rolled into one. Something could be made out of that boy, he concluded; the Society, always ready to adopt promising neophytes on the recommendation of a qualified practitioner like himself, would doubtless enrol him in due course. Meanwhile he instructed him, by precept and example, how to be religious in the manner most pleasing to the Madonna. He narrated the Lives of the Saints, forced him to attend Mass and confess himself to one of the Society's trusted priests and taught him, above all things, to hate the Government because it oppressed the Pope and the poor. One day he said: "You must now attend evening classes. I think you will do well at our school of the Holy Cross. Your outfit is exceptional. Among other things you have the great advantage that the first and second fingers of both your hands are of equal length. That augurs well! God has favoured you, for many lads have to lengthen the first one artificially, which is apt to weaken the joints."