My stare must have betrayed my amazement at such words. “Not so, magnificent,” I made answer. “I am destined for the life monastic.” “Monastic!” quoth he, in a sort of horror, and looking as if a bad smell had suddenly been thrust under his nose. He shrugged and pouted and had fresh recourse to his pomander. “O, well! Friars have become popes before to-day.” “I am to enter the hermit order of St. Augustine,” I again corrected. “Ah!” said Caro, in his big, full voice. “He aspires not to Rome but to Heaven, my lord.” “Then what the devil does he in your house, Fifanti?” quoth the Cardinal. “Are you to teach him sanctity?” And the table shook with laughter at a jest I did not understand any more than I understood my Lord Cardinal. Messer Fifanti, sitting at the table-head, shot me a glance of anxious inquiry; he smiled foolishly, and washed his hands in the air again, his mind fumbling for an answer that should turn aside that barbed jest. But he was forestalled by my cousin Cosimo. “The teaching might come more aptly from Monna Giuliana,” said he, and smiled very boldly across at Fifanti's lady who sat beside me, whilst a frown grew upon the prodigious brow of the pedant. “Indeed, indeed,” the Cardinal murmured, considering her through half-closed eyes, “there is no man but may enter Paradise at her bidding.” And he sighed furiously, whilst she chid him for his boldness; and for all that much of what they said was in a language that might have been unknown to me, yet was I lost in amazement to see a prelate made so free with. She turned to me, and the glory of her eyes fell about my soul like an effulgence. “Do not heed them, Ser Agostino. They are profane and wicked men,” she said, “and if you aspire to holiness, the less you see of them the better will it be for you.” I did not doubt it, yet I dared not make so bold as to confess it, and I wondered why they should laugh to hear her earnest censure of them. “It is a thorny path, this path of holiness,” said the Cardinal sighing. “Your excellency has been told so, we assume,” quoth Caro, who had a very bitter tongue for one who looked so well-nourished and contented. “I might have found it so for myself but that my lot has been cast among sinners,” answered the Cardinal, comprehending the company in his glance and gesture. “As it is, I do what I can to mend their lot.” “Now here is gallantry of a different sort!” cried the little Leocadia with a giggle. “O, as to that,” quoth Cosimo, showing his fine teeth in a smile, “there is a proverb as to the gallantry of priests. It is like the love of women, which again is like water in a basket--as soon in as out.” And his eyes hung upon Giuliana. “When you are the basket, sir captain, shall anyone blame the women?” she countered with her lazy insolence. “Body of God!” cried the Cardinal, and laughed wholeheartedly, whilst my cousin scowled. “There you have the truth, Cosimo, and the truth is better than proverbs.”