He looked at me very searchingly, seeking in my countenance--as I now know--some trace of irony or guile. Finding none, he turned to my mother. He was very solemn.
“Madonna,” he said quietly, “I think that Agostino is nearer to being a saint than either you or I will ever get.”
She looked at him, first in surprise, then very sadly. Slowly she shook her head. “Unhappily for him there is another arbiter of saintship, Who sees deeper than do you, Gervasio.”
He bowed his head. “Better not to look deep enough than to do as you seem in danger of doing, Madonna, and by looking too deep imagine things which do not exist.”
“Ah, you will defend him against reason even,” she complained. “His anger exists. His thirst to kill--to stamp himself with the brand of Cain--exists. He confesses that himself. His insubordination to me you have seen for yourself; and that again is sin, for it is ordained that we shall honour our parents.
“O!” she moaned. “My authority is all gone. He is beyond my control. He has shaken off the reins by which I sought to guide him.”
“You had done well to have taken my advice a year ago, Madonna. Even now it is not too late. Let him go to Pavia, to the Sapienza, to study his humanities.”
“Out into the world!” she cried in horror. “O, no, no! I have sheltered him here so carefully!”
“Yet you cannot shelter him for ever,” said he. “He must go out into the world some day.”
“He need not,” she faltered. “If the call were strong enough within him, a convent...” She left her sentence unfinished, and looked at me.
“Go, Agostino,” she bade me. “Fra Gervasio and I must talk.”
I went reluctantly, since in the matter of their talk none could have had a greater interest than I, seeing that my fate stood in the balance of it. But I went, none the less, and her last words to me as I was departing were an injunction that I should spend the time until I should take up my studies for the day with Fra Gervasio in seeking forgiveness for the morning's sins and grace to do better in the future.
I did not again see my mother that day, nor did she sup with us that evening. I was told by Fra Gervasio that on my account was she in retreat, praying for light and guidance in the thing that must be determined concerning me.
