had taught himself patience over the fine, endless text of an ancient gospel, or wrought into the exquisite illumination of some missal which stood to him in the place of his daily living those yearning, torturing, hungering affections which had so enriched a gentle home—­as a brother, less disciplined, had carved his unruly tempers into the grotesque figures of the reading desks.  But for Fra Paolo the great library of the convent held no unsatisfied yearnings—­only an infinite content and power to achieve.

From the days when those curious in philosophical research had flocked from the neighboring universities to see this professor of theology who could not be conquered in argument, and had been confronted by a smooth-faced lad of twenty, until now, he was still the glory of the Servi; and well might the friars watch in triumph, as one by one he gathered laurels for their order.  A little human flush of triumph or of self-conceit would have added charm to his argument, but these notes were lacking; clearly, logically, unanswerably, he met each question, convincing without emotion and hastening from the gay court, of which these intellectual tourneys were the delight, to the welcome seclusion of the convent.  If he seemed to have missed a real childhood,—­its follies, its innocent pleasures, its winsome affections,—­so later, the temptations that would naturally beset a career so extraordinary fell harmlessly away from him, for a passion for knowledge burned within him, consuming all ignoble motives and keeping this young scholar, in friar’s robes, in marvelous singleness of heart, in the midst of a flattering and luxurious court.

Always he had been a law to himself, both morally and intellectually; never before did it seem that genius had been cast in a mold so orderly and calm.  In that state of intense concentration which was his habitual mood, he accomplished without apparent effort the things for which others paid by a life-time of struggle; and morally he had no visible combats, not seeming to be even reached by the things which tempted other men.  His wants were fewer than the simplest rule of his convent allowed, and it seemed less that he had triumphed over the usual earthly temptations than that he had been created abnormally free from them that his whole strength might spend itself in the solving of problems.  In a certain sense he stood mysteriously alone, though his friends were many and devoted and among the wise and venerated of the earth; but there was always a door closed to them beyond the affection which he returned them.  “Always,” he said once, “we veil our faces”:  yet none doubted his sincerity.

From time to time, as the years sped, some echo of the jealousy which his phenomenal success and the boldness of his bearing naturally evoked, penetrated to the cloisters of the Servi; and more than once there had been a denunciation to the Inquisition to discuss; some one in authority had found fault with his theological opinions and denounced him for his reading of a passage in Genesis, upon which he based his argument—­the affair was grave indeed.