It held me spellbound. It was more real then anything that I had ever read
or heard; and the fate of Dido moved me as if I had known and loved her; so
that long ere Messer Caro came to an end I was weeping freely in a most
exquisite misery.
Thereafter I was as one who has tasted strong wine and finds his thirst
fired by it. Within a week I had read the Aeneid through, and was reading
it a second time. Then came the Comedies of Terence, the Metamorphoses of
Ovid, Martial, and the Satires of Juvenal. And with those my
transformation was complete. No longer could I find satisfaction in the
writings of the fathers of the church, or in contemplating the lives of the
saints, after the pageantries which the eyes of my soul had looked upon in
the profane authors.
What instructions my mother supposed Fifanti to have received concerning me
from Arcolano, I cannot think. But certain it is that she could never have
dreamed under what influences I was so soon to come, no more than she could
conceive what havoc they played with all that hitherto I had learnt and
with the resolutions that I had formed--and that she had formed for me--
concerning the future.
All this reading perturbed me very oddly, as one is perturbed who having
long dwelt in darkness is suddenly brought into the sunlight and dazzled by
it, so that, grown conscious of his sight, he is more effectively blinded
than he was before.
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