The Tintoretta had greater claims than Juliette to the admiration of sensible men.  She loved poetry, and if it had not been that I was expecting the bishop, I would have fallen in love with her.  She was herself smitten with a young physician of great merit, named Righelini, who died in the prime of life, and whom I still regret.  I shall have to mention him in another part of my Memoirs.

Towards the end of the carnival, my mother wrote to M. Grimani that it would be a great shame if the bishop found me under the roof of an opera dancer, and he made up his mind to lodge me in a respectable and decent place.  He took the Abbe Tosello into consultation, and the two gentlemen thought that the best thing they could do for me would be to send me to a clerical seminary.  They arranged everything unknown to me, and the abbe undertook to inform me of their plan and to obtain from me a gracious consent.  But when I heard him speak with beautiful flowers of rhetoric for the purpose of gilding the bitter pill, I could not help bursting into a joyous laughter, and I astounded his reverence when I expressed my readiness to go anywhere he might think right to send me.

The plan of the two worthy gentlemen was absurd, for at the age of seventeen, and with a nature like mine, the idea of placing me in a seminary ought never to have been entertained, but ever a faithful disciple of Socrates, feeling no unconquerable reluctance, and the plan, on the contrary, appearing to me rather a good joke, I not only gave a ready consent, but I even longed to enter the seminary.  I told M. Grimani I was prepared to accept anything, provided Razetta had nothing to do with it.  He gave me his promise, but he did not keep it when I left the seminary.  I have never been able to decide whether this Grimani was kind because he was a fool, or whether his stupidity was the result of his kindness, but all his brothers were the same.  The worst trick that Dame Fortune can play upon an intelligent young man is to place him under the dependence of a fool.  A few days afterwards, having been dressed as a pupil of a clerical seminary by the care of the abbe, I was taken to Saint-Cyprian de Muran and introduced to the rector.

The patriarchal church of Saint-Cyprian is served by an order of the monks, founded by the blessed Jerome Miani, a nobleman of Venice.  The rector received me with tender affection and great kindness.  But in his address (which was full of unction) I thought I could perceive a suspicion on his part that my being sent to the seminary was a punishment, or at least a way to put a stop to an irregular life, and, feeling hurt in my dignity, I told him at once, “Reverend father, I do not think that any one has the right of punishing me.”

“No, no, my son,” he answered, “I only meant that you would be very happy with us.”

We were then shewn three halls, in which we found at least one hundred and fifty seminarists, ten or twelve schoolrooms, the refectory, the dormitory, the gardens for play hours, and every pain was taken to make me imagine life in such a place the happiest that could fall to the lot of a young man, and to make me suppose that I would even regret the arrival of the bishop.  Yet they all tried to cheer me up by saying that I would only remain there five or six months.  Their eloquence amused me greatly.