But your mother..." He broke off.

"It is decided that you go to him at once, to take up your study of the humanities under his tutelage, and that you abide with him until you are of an age for ordination, which your mother hopes will be very soon.

Indeed, it is her wish that you should enter the subdeaconate in the autumn, and your novitiate next year, to fit you for the habit of St.Augustine." He fell silent, adding no comment of any sort, as if he waited to hear what of my own accord I might have to urge.

But my mind was incapable of travelling beyond the fact that I was to go out into the world to-morrow.
The circumstance that I should become a monk was no departure from the idea to which I had been trained, although explicitly no more than my mere priesthood had been spoken of.

So I lay there without thinking of any words in which to answer him.
Gervasio considered me steadily, and sighed a little.