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It was evening I was sitting on the bed, with one of the dogs stretched out beside me and the other stretched out under

And there wasat last, as I supposed I should have expected

I knew her by her particular movement in the shadows, and whereas if anyone else had co at all to her

I had a great and unshakable love of her I don’t think anyone else did And one thing that endeared her toordinary

"Shut the door," "Eat your soup," "Sit still," things like that never passed her lips She read all the time; in fact, she was the only one in our family who had any education, and when she did speak it was really to speak So I wasn’t resentful of her now

On the contrary she aroused my curiosity What would she say, and would it conceivably make a difference to ht of her, and I didn’t turn away from the fire to look at her

But there was a powerful understanding between us When I had tried to escape this house and been brought back, it was she who had shown me the way out of the pain that followed Miracles she’d worked for h no one around us had ever noticed

Her first intervention had coht me some poetry by rote and to read an anthem or two in Latin, wanted to send me to school at the nearby monastery

My father said no, that I could learn all I needed in my own house But it was my mother who roused herself from her books to do loud and vociferous battle with hio, she said, if I wanted to And she sold one of her jewels to pay forHer jewels had all corand for her to do But she did it iry and reminded her that if this had happened before he went blind, his ould have prevailed surely My brothers assured hi I’d co I didn’t want to do

Well, I didn’t co home I loved the monastery school

I loved the chapel and the hymns, the library with its thousands of old books, the bells that divided the day, the ever repeated rituals I loved the cleanliness of the place, the overwhelood repair, that work never ceased throughout the great house and the gardens

When I was corrected, which wasn’t often, I knew an intense happiness because so to s

Within a month I declared my vocation I wanted to enter the order I wanted to spendon parch to read the ancient books I wanted to be enclosed forever with people who believed I could be good if I wanted to be

I was liked there And that was aI didn’t ry

The Father Superior wrote immediately to ask ht lad to be rid of me

But three days later ged to stay, but there was nothing the Father Superior could do

And as soon as we reached the castle, my brothers took away my books and locked ry There was the hint that I had behaved like a fool for so round and round and s the door

Thento me He’d circle the point at first, but what careat French fa brother How could I haveso completely? I was sent there to learn to read and write Why did I always have to go to extremes? Why did I behave habitually like a wild creature?

As for beco a priest with real prospects within the Church, well, I was the youngest son of this faht to think of my duties to my nieces and nephews

Translate all that to mean this: We have no money to launch a real ecclesiastical career for you, to make you a bishop or cardinal as befits our rank, so you have to live out your life here as an illiterate and a beggar Coreat hall and play chess with your father

After I got to understand it, I wept right at the supper table, and"chaos," and was sent back to my room for it

Then my mother came to me

She said: "You don’t knohat chaos is Why do you use words like that?"

"I know," I said I started to describe to her the dirt and the decay that was everywhere here and to tell how the monastery had been, clean and orderly, a place where if you set your

She didn’t argue And young as I was, I knew that she ar to her

The next , she took me on a journey

We rode for half a day before we reached the i lord, and there she and the gentleman took me out to the kennel, where she told me to choose my favorites from a new litter ofas tender and endearing as these little s were like drowsy lions as they watched us Sinificent

I was too excited alht back thethem all the way home on my lap in a basket

And within a ht for ood horse for riding

She never did say why she’d done all this But I understood in s, trained thereat kennel upon thes, and by the age of sixteen I lived in the field

But at home, I was more than ever a nuisance Nobody really wanted to hear lected fields, or offro The silent ebb and flow of life without change seemed deadly to me

I went to church on all the feast days just to break the e fairs careedy for the little spectacles I saw at no other tiht be the salers, mimes, and acrobats of years past, but it didn’t e of the seasons and the idle talk of past glories

But that year, the year I was sixteen, a troupe of Italian players caon in back of which they set up the e I’d ever seen They put on the old Italian co lovers, Lelio and Isabella, and the old doctor and all the old tricks

I was in raptures watching it I’d never seen anything like it, the cleverness of it, the quickness, the vitality I loved it even when the words went so fast I couldn’t follow them

When the troupe had finished and collected what they could fro about with them at the inn and stood them all to wine I couldn’t really afford, just so that I could talk to them

I felt inexpressible love for these men and women They explained to me how each actor had his role for life, and how they did not use e You knew your name, your character, and you understood hiht he should That was the genius of it

It was called the commedia dell’arte

I was enchanted I fell in love with the young girl who played Isabella I went into the wagon with the players and examined all the costuain at the tavern, they letlover to Isabella, and they clapped their hands and said I had the gift I could ht this was all flattery at first, but in some very real way, it didn’t matter whether or not it was flattery

The next e, I was in it I was hidden in the back with a few coins I’d oing to be an actor

Now, Lelio in the old Italian comedy is supposed to be quite handsome; he’s the lover, as I have explained, and he doesn’t wear a , so much the better because that’s part of the role

Well, the troupe thought that in all these things I was blessed They trained ive And the day before we put on the shoent about the town, a e, to be certain -- advertising the play with the others

I was in heaven But neither the journey nor the preparations nor the camaraderie with my fellow players came near to the ecstasy I knehen I finally stood on that little wooden stage

I ildly into the pursuit of Isabella I found a tongue for verses and wit I’d never had in life I could hearoff the stone walls aroundback at e to stop reat success

That night, the actress who played ave me her own very special and intimate accolades I went to sleep in her ar was that e got to Paris we’d play the St Germain Fair, and then we’d leave the troupe and we’d stay in Paris working on the boulevard du Teot into the Comedie-Francaise itself and perfor Louis

When I woke up the next one and so were all the players, and my brothers were there I never knew if htened off More likely the latter Whatever the case, I was taken back hoain

Of course my fa to be a monk when you are twelve is excusable

But the theater had the taint of the devil Even the great Moliere had not been given a Christian burial And I’d run off with a troupe of ragged vagabond Italians, painted my face white, and acted with them in a town square for money

I was beaten severely, and when I cursed everyone, I was beaten again

The worst punish the look onAnd I had wounded her, a thing that had never really happened before

But she never said anything about it

When she came to me, she listened to me cry I saw tears in her eyes And she laid her hand ona little remarkable

I didn’t tell her what it had been like, those few days But I think she knew Soain, she defied s, the restrictions

She had me sit beside her at the table She deferred to me, actually talked to me in conversation that was perfectly unnatural to her, until she had subdued and dissolved the rancor of the family