“Read him, then,” he urged me. “He will teach you much that you need to know. And read in particular the story of Abraam, the Jew, who upon visiting Rome was so scandalized by the licence and luxury of the clergy that he straightway had himself baptized and became a Christian, accounting that a religion that could survive such wiles of Satan to destroy it must indeed be the true religion, divinely inspired.” He laughed his little cynical laugh to see my confusion increased by that bitter paradox. It is little wonder that I was all bewildered, that I was like some poor mariner upon unknown waters, without stars or compass. Thus that summer ebbed slowly, and the time of my projected minor ordination approached. Messer Gambara's visits to Fifanti's grew more and more frequent, until they became a daily occurrence; and now my cousin Cosimo came oftener too. But it was their custom to come in the forenoon, when I was at work with Fifanti. And often I observed the doctor to be oddly preoccupied, and to spend much time in creeping to the window that was all wreathed in clematis, and in peeping through that purple-decked green curtain into the garden where his excellency and Cosimo walked with Monna Giuliana. When both visitors were there his anxiety seemed less. But if only one were present he would give himself no peace. And once when Messer Gambara and she went together within doors, he abruptly interrupted my studies, saying that it was enough for that day; and he went below to join them. Half a year earlier I should have had no solution for his strange behaviour. But I had learnt enough of the world by now to perceive what maggot was stirring in that egg-shaped head. Yet I blushed for him, and for his foul and unworthy suspicions. As soon would I have suspected the painted Madonna from the brush of Raffaele Santi that I had seen over the high altar of the Church of San Sisto, as suspect the beautiful and noble-souled Giuliana of giving that old pedant cause for his uneasiness. Still, I conceived that this was the penalty that such a withered growth of humanity must pay for having presumed to marry a young wife. We were much together in those days, Monna Giuliana and I. Our intimacy had grown over a little incident that it were well I should mention. A young painter, Gianantonio Regillo, better known to the world as Il Pordenone, had come to Piacenza that summer to decorate the Church of Santa Maria della Campagna. He came furnished with letters to the Governor, and Gambara had brought him to Fifanti's villa. From Monna Giuliana the young painter heard the curious story of my having been vowed prenatally to the cloister by my mother, learnt her name and mine, and the hope that was entertained that I should walk in the ways of St. Augustine after whom I had been christened.