He will be the comfort of your old age." The gardener, always growing older and thinner, shook his head.

He should only be able to see the end of his son's career from the heavens, should it please God to call him there.

He would die before his son's triumph; but this did not sadden him, for the family would remain to enjoy the victory and to give thanks to God for His goodness.
Humanities, theology, canons, everything, the young man mastered with an ease which surprised his masters, and they compared him to the Fathers of the Church, who had attracted attention by their precocity.
He would very soon finish his studies, and they all predicted that his Eminence would give him a professorship in the seminary, even before he sang his first mass.

His thirst for learning was insatiable, and it seemed as though the library really belonged to him.

Some evenings he would go into the Cathedral to pursue his musical studies, and talk with the Chapel-master and the organist, and at other times in the hall of sacred oratory he would astound the professors and the Alumni by the fervour and conviction with which he delivered his sermons.
"He is called to the pulpit," they said in the Cathedral garden.