The friar set a hand upon my shoulder. “You see, Agostino, that your excursions into holy things do not promise well. Away with you, boy! Off with this hypocrite robe, and get you out into the world to do useful work for God and man. Had your heart truly called you to the priesthood, I had been the first to have guided your steps thither. But your mind upon such matters has been warped, and your views are all false; you confound mysticism with true religion, and mouldering in a hermitage with the service of God. How can you serve God here? Is not the world God's world that you must shun it as if the Devil had fashioned it? Go, I say--and I say it with the authority of the orders that I bear--go and serve man, and thus shall you best serve God. All else are but snares to such a nature as yours.” I looked at him helplessly, and from him to Galeotto who stood there, his black brows knit; watching me with intentness as if great issues hung upon my answer. And Gervasio's words touched in my mind some chord of memory. They were words that I had heard before--or something very like them, something whose import was the same. Then I groaned miserably and took my head in my hands. “Whither am I to go?” I cried. “What place is there in all the world for me? I am an outcast. My very home is held against me. Whither, then, shall I go?” “If that is all that troubles you,” said Galeotto, his tone unctuously humorous, “why we will ride to Pagliano.” I leapt at the word--literally leapt to my feet, and stared at him with blazing eyes. “Why, what ails him now?” quoth he. Well might he ask. That name--Pagliano--had stirred my memory so violently, that of a sudden as in a flash I had seen again the strange vision that visited my delirium; I had seen again the inviting eyes, the beckoning hands, and heard again the gentle voice saying, “Come to Pagliano! Come soon!” And now I knew, too, where I had heard words urging my return to the world that were of the same import as those which Gervasio used. What magic was there here? What wizardry was at play? I knew--for they had told me--that it had been that cavalier who had visited me, that man whose name was Ettore de' Cavalcanti, who had borne news to them of one who was strangely like what Giovanni d'Anguissola had been. But Pagliano had never yet been mentioned. “Where is Pagliano?” I asked. “In Lombardy--in the Milanes,” replied Galeotto. “It is the home of Cavalcanti.” “You are faint, Agostino,” cried Gervasio, with a sudden solicitude, and put an arm about my shoulders as I staggered. “No, no,” said I. “It is nothing. Tell me--” And I paused almost afraid to put the question, lest the answer should dash my sudden hope. For it seemed to me that in this place of false miracles, one true miracle at least had been wrought; if it should be proved so indeed, then would I accept it as a sign that my salvation lay indeed in the world. If not...