beautiful.  Alas! my dear young friend, you have yet to learn your Italians.  There is no such Italy, least of all Tuscany, as you profess to have read of in Donna Aurelia’s simple soul.  I don’t know the young lady, but I know her kind.  She is undoubtedly a good-hearted, shrewd little housewife, careful of her reputation and honestly proud of it.  She will make, I expect, a first-rate, if too fond, mother.  You, of course, try to make a Beatrice of her, quite regardless of the possibility that you are not a Dante, or even a Diotima (which, thank Heaven, she is not yet), not remembering how far you are from being a Socrates.  My dear young man, I shall not forbid you her society—­ subject, of course, to her own and her husband’s judgment, which, I promise you, I shall obtain beforehand.  Seek it then by all means, but seek it with circumspection.  Remember that she will not thrive upon the fine poetry you will make of her—­nor will you, indeed; but that is your own affair.  Seek her, therefore, with reasonable care for her future.  In two words, write to her husband, and for once deprive yourself of your luxurious mysteries, and go to work in the light of day.  As for your Virginia—­you have a fondness for female society, I fancy—­don’t trouble your head further with that little parasite.”

His injunctions were obeyed, though I could not agree with all his conclusions.  I wrote respectfully to my father, candidly to Dr. Lanfranchi; I wrote on my knees to Aurelia—­though, as I now know, Padre Carnesecchi put the letter into his pocket.  Expiatory rites of a religious sort, wisely recommended and cheerfully performed, I omit from this narrative.  At their end I was set entirely at liberty; and there seemed no limit to the benevolence of the Society of Jesus in my regard.  Money, clothes, a servant were found for me, a lodging in the Piazza Santa Maria, introductions into the fashionable world.  I took my own rank once more, I had tutors, books, leisure, the respect of my equals.  I went to Court, was made a visiting member of the famous Delia Cruscan Academy; I was offered a box at the opera, a villa in the hills, a mistress.  I made the acquaintance of Count Giraldi, a gentleman not only in the immediate service of the sovereign but high in the confidence of the heir-apparent, a man of the world, a traveller, affable, an abundant linguist, no mean philosopher, possessor of a cabinet of antiquities, a fine library, a band of musicians second to none in Florence.  If ever a young man was placed square upon his feet again after a damaging fall it was I. For this much, at least, I render a solemn act of remembrance to the Society of Jesus, who must not be held responsible for the series of events which befell me next, and by which it came to pass that the cup of my fortunes went again and again to the bitter fountain of shame.