name which Virginia essayed to write was mine, but the second, Aurelia’s.  She took her own in hand last.  The verb chosen for these easy essays was as usual amare:  but its application to the walls was again the pupil’s device.  I allowed her willingly to write “Don Francesco ama Donna Aurelia,” but forbade her to reverse the names.  One day when I was out she put “Virginia Strozzi ama Don Francesco.”  I did not know it till long afterwards.

I gave her the rudiments of literature also:  I grounded her in letters as well as in lettering.  Amongst my few possessions were still my “Aminta” and my “Fioretti”:  and I knew much of Dante’s comedy by heart.  Virginia had a retentive memory and great aptitude for learning.  Whenever she did well I called her a good child, and she was so dreadfully afraid lest I might withhold the praise that she toiled at her ciphering and pothooks long after I was asleep.  There is no doubt that this was a happy time for both adventurers—­full of interest for me, and of extreme comfort for the girl whom I was able to befriend.

It is not to be pretended that we kept good company.  We were outcasts, and were thrown of necessity amongst those who had been cast out.  But the standards of life vary with those who live, and I never could see that a man was less of a thief because he thieved from a throne, or less a profligate because he debauched a princess.  I was, no doubt, in advance of my time; these are the ideas of Monsieur Voltaire.  I believe that I saw a great deal of iniquity, for the taverns and gaming-dens to which I sometimes resorted for shelter or entertainment were filled with desperadoes of all sorts—­deserters from the army, thieves, coin-clippers in hiding, assassins elect, women of the town, and even worse.  But while I expect my reader to believe that I never sinned with them, I shall find him harder to convince that I was never invited to sin.  Such, however, is the fact, and of course it is open to the retort that you do not invite a drunkard to be drunk.  Be that as it may, I met these unfortunates upon the common ground of civility, conversed with them as equals, and was not only respected by them for what I was, but came myself to respect them in spite of what they were.  Virginia taught me much here.  With her it never was, “Such-and-such is a woman of infamous life,” but rather, “Such-and-such has a fine ear for music, or can make a complicated risotto.”  I learned, with astonishment, that with the most deplorable degradation of life there could consist an ability to share the interests of the most refined persons.  These associates of ours made no secret of their avocations (except to the police), nor were they abashed or confounded if I happened to meet them in the exercise of them; but, business done, they were to be treated like Mr. Councillor or My Lady.  Nor was this an arbitrary exaction or a curious foppery on their part; not at all, but as they expected to be taken, so they behaved