And once when Messer Gambara and she went together within doors, he abruptly interrupted my studies, saying that it was enough for that day; and he went below to join them.
Half a year earlier I should have had no solution for his strange behaviour.

But I had learnt enough of the world by now to perceive what maggot was stirring in that egg-shaped head.

Yet I blushed for him, and for his foul and unworthy suspicions.

As soon would I have suspected the painted Madonna from the brush of Raffaele Santi that I had seen over the high altar of the Church of San Sisto, as suspect the beautiful and noble-souled Giuliana of giving that old pedant cause for his uneasiness.

Still, I conceived that this was the penalty that such a withered growth of humanity must pay for having presumed to marry a young wife.
We were much together in those days, Monna Giuliana and I.Our intimacy had grown over a little incident that it were well I should mention.
A young painter, Gianantonio Regillo, better known to the world as Il Pordenone, had come to Piacenza that summer to decorate the Church of Santa Maria della Campagna.