His master in Hebrew was the Dominican Father Ceruti, a learned Orientalist and professor of that language in the university. About the same time also, he must have become acquainted with Arabic, a language for the study of which Bologna had early acquired a reputation. And, what is a still more unequivocal exhibition of his early enthusiasm, although Coptic formed no part of the circle of university studies, Görres states that he learned this language also under the Canon John Lewis Mingarelli.[289] If this account be true, as Mingarelli died in March 1793, Mezzofanti must have acquired Coptic before he had completed his nineteenth year. Nor did he meanwhile neglect the modern languages. About the year 1792, a French ecclesiastic a native of Blois, one of those whom the successive decrees of the Constituent Assembly had driven into exile, came to reside in Bologna. From him Mezzofanti speedily acquired French.[290] He received his first lessons in German from F. Thiulen,[291] who had been one of his masters in the Scuole Pie; and who, although a Swede by birth, was acquainted with the cognate language of Germany. From him, too, most probably, Mezzofanti would also have learned his native Swedish, but, on the occupation of northern Italy by the French, F. Thiulen, who had made himself obnoxious to the revolutionary party in Bologna, by his writings in favour of the Papal authority, had been arrested and sent into exile.[292] Perhaps Thiulen’s absence from Bologna was the occasion of calling into exercise that marvellous quickness in mastering the structure of a new language, which often, during Mezzofanti’s later career, excited the amazement even of his most familiar friends. At all events, the first occasion of his exhibiting this singular faculty of which I have been able to discover any authentic record, is the following:—