My first visit to the country ended in a sad event, which was to shape the whole course of my life.  It was in June, and my mother and her friend Mariuccia took me to see the famous flower fete at Genzano.  We stayed the night at an inn, and in the morning joined the dense holiday crowd that moved over the carpet of flowers on the pavement of the main street.  Suddenly there was a piercing cry—­a pair of unmanageable horses rushed through.  I was thrown down, and all was blackness.  When I awoke, Mother of God, I lay with my head on Mariuccia’s lap, beside the lifeless form of my mother, crushed by the carriage wheel!  The occupant of the carriage, a gentleman of the Borghese family, had escaped with a shaking, and sent a servant in rich livery with a purse containing twenty scudi for the motherless child.

Mariuccia took me back to Rome; it was decided that her parents, who kept flocks in the Campagna—­honest people to whom my twenty scudi would be wealth—­should take charge of me.  Thus, in the dreary Campagna, with honest Benedetto and kindly Domenica, I spent the summer and the early autumn in the ancient tomb which they had transformed into a hut.  The first week it rained incessantly; then, with the sun, came the insufferable heat, increasing in intensity from day to day, from week to week.  Even the buffaloes lay like dead masses upon the burnt-up grass, unless, excited to madness by the poison-stings of myriads of flies, that covered them as if they were carrion, they rushed in mad career to the Tiber to roll themselves in the yellow water.

One day, towards sunset, I was just opening the door to leave the hut, when a man darted in so suddenly that I was thrown down.  With lightning speed he shut the door, and in a distressed tone uttered the name of the Madonna, when a violent blow shattered the door, and the whole opening was filled with the head of a fierce buffalo, whose body was tightly squeezed into the doorway.  The stranger seized a gun from the wall, took aim, and shot the beast.  The danger over, he lifted me from the ground, and said:  “Blessed be Madonna!  You have saved my life.”  He inquired about me.  I was made to show him my abominable sketches upon bits of paper and to sing to him, and caused him astonishment at my improvising about the Madonna and himself and the buffalo.  He finally asked Domenica to bring me next morning to see him at the Borghese Palace.  He was the powerful prince himself, who had unwittingly been the cause of my poor mother’s death!

II.—­In the School of Life

The prince, his daughter Francesca, and her fiance Fabiani, overwhelmed me with kindness.  The visit had to be frequently repeated; and I became quite accustomed to the splendours of the palazzo.  Finally, Eccellenza decided to have me educated in the Jesuits’ school; and I had to bid farewell to good Domenica and to enter upon my school life.  New occupations engrossed me; new acquaintances presented themselves; the dramatic portion of my life began to unfold itself.  Here years compress themselves together.