Doctor Gozzi, whose patience with me—despite my failings-- had not yet worn thin, called me one morning into his study.
"Tell me, Giacomo," he said gently, "would you trust my advice if I offered it?"
I nodded, though I had no clue on what he had on mind.
"Not yet," he continued. "First, we must remove you from that wretched boarding house. I would have you join my household, if your patrons permit. What say you to that?"
At those words my heart leapt. Deliverance itself could not have sounded sweeter.
"Yes, Doctor," I stammered. "Please—tell me what to do."
He placed before me blank sheets of paper.
"Then write to your protectors. Explain your situation plainly."
I obeyed with the zeal of a prisoner dictating his own pardon. I wrote three letters. One to the Abbé Grimani, one to Signor Baffo, and one to my excellent grandmother.
I described the foul food, the vermin, the long nights of cold and the wretched beds. I swore that if they delayed, they would have a corpse instead of a pupil.
I begged to be entrusted to the doctor's care who was ready to receive me for two sequins a month.
Grimani answered by proxy: his friend Ottaviani came to scold me for being "ensnared by the priest."
Signor Baffo, more generous, consulted my grandmother, who could not write but whose judgment rarely erred.
His reply was brief: "You will soon find yourself in better hands."
Within the week she came.
It was just before dinner. The mistress had ladled our usual gray broth into earthen bowls. I had not yet raised my spoon -wooden of course- when the door creaked open—and there she stood.
My excellent grandmother.
I sprang to her, tears coming unbidden. They were not graceful tears; they burst like a dam long held.
She embraced me and began to weep in turn. Between us, misery dissolved into warmth.
I pulled her upstairs to the garret. "Look," I said, "this is where I've slept these six months." She inspected the broken window, the wind-stiff sheets, the pillow thin as parchment—
And the rats, the abominable rats!
"Please," I whispered, "take me away—and give me a good dinner, just one."
Downstairs, she faced the mistress, who shrugged with weary indifference.
"I did the best I could with what I was paid."
And indeed, there was some truth in that — yet she had no business to keep house and to become the tormentor of poor children who were thrown on her hands by stinginess, and who required to be properly fed.
My grandmother did not argue.
"He will leave your house this instant," she said. "Do you object?"
The woman did not.
I cannot express the joy of those preparations.
For the first time in months, happiness flooded me so completely that forgiveness seemed the only fitting use for it. Even she, the tormentor of my youth, was spared a grudge.
That evening, at the inn, a fire glowed on the hearth. The scent of roast chicken reached me before the platter.
When it came, I fell upon it with the appetite of resurrection—bread in one hand, meat in the other, chewing before I had even swallowed, swallowing before I breathed.
My grandmother watched in silence, her eyes wide, her fork untouched.
"Oh Giacomo," she murmured at last, "what did they do to you?"
I might have answered—but my mouth was full, and happiness, like hunger, leaves little room for speech.
Doctor Gozzi, to whom my grandmother had sent word of her arrival, came soon after. His appearance alone would have won her good opinion.
He was then twenty-six, of full face and cheerful aspect, modest in bearing, his cassock spotless, and his manners those of a man accustomed to speak gently and be heard.
A few words sufficed between them.
In less than a quarter of an hour all was arranged.
My grandmother, counted out twenty-four sequins for the year and received a written acknowledgment.
The doctor promised to see to my education and my care.
She kept me three more days, determined that I should look respectable before I entered his house.
My hair, hopelessly tangled, had to be cut off entirely.
She ordered me a small abbé's robe and a modest wig—symbols, in her eyes, of both cleanliness and dignity.
When I put them on, I scarcely recognized myself.
At the end of the three days, she took me to the doctor's house to settle me in person.
The doctor's dwelling was modest but well kept, smelling faintly of herbs and polished wood.
His mother received us with courtesy and practical care. "You will need a bed for him," she said, "or one may be bought here."
But Doctor Gozzi replied with a smile:
"My bed is broad enough; the boy may share it with me."
My grandmother hesitated only a moment, then said quietly,
"You have my thanks for all your kindness."
When everything was settled, we walked her to the quay. The burchiello waited, ropes creaking against the posts.
She kissed my forehead, gave the brief counsel only grandmothers can give, and stepped aboard.
I stood watching as the boat drew away until her figure blurred in the distance.
The house ran on early prayers. When Doctor Gozzi's step sounded on the stair, his mother rose from her chair, wiped her hands on her apron, and crossed herself before he even entered.
"Benedetto," she would murmur without looking up.
The doctor would incline his head in embarrassment, gently nodding.
She had been born to the fields and never thought herself worthy of a priest for a son—still less a doctor of divinity.
Plain, old, often sharp of tongue, she softened only for him.
His father spoke to no one from Monday to Saturday. He bent over his bench, driving the awl through leather, steady as the bell across the street. At meals he ate in silence and returned to work.
On feast days the silence collapsed.
Near midnight he would lurch through the door with Tasso verses on his tongue and wine on his breath, beating time on the table and refusing all attempts to lead him to bed.
"A man does not lie down to poetry," he declared, planting his feet.
His wife set down her rolling pin. "He never would have married me," she confided, half amused, "had his friends not given him a good breakfast before church."
Bettina—his sister—was lively and incurably curious.
I once found a gilt-edged romance tucked inside a cookbook; she pressed a finger to her lips and slipped toward the window.
"Bettina!" her mother called from the corridor. "Leave the window."
"And the romances," the doctor added, passing with an armful of catechisms.
She vanished with a smile.
This girl took at once my fancy without my knowing why, and little by little she kindled in my heart the first spark of a passion which, afterwards became in me the ruling one.
Six months after my arrival I was the only pupil left.
The doctor straightened the empty benches, said Providence preferred quality to number, and set about founding a college for boarders.
He drafted letters, called on patrons, pinned a neat handbill to the church board. Two years passed before one boy came.
During that period, he taught me everything he knew; true, it was not much; yet it was enough to open to me the high road to all sciences.
He likewise taught me the violin, an accomplishment which proved very useful to me in a peculiar circumstance, the particulars of which I will give in good time.
The excellent doctor, who was in no way a philosopher, made me study the logic of the Peripatetics, and the cosmography of the ancient system of Ptolemy, at which I would laugh, teasing the poor doctor with theorems to which he could find no answer.
About the Deluge he was certain: universal. About the patriarchs: he found it reasonable that they lived a thousand years and spoke with God.
Noah, he said, took a century to build the ark. The world, he said, hangs in the center of the universe God created from nothing.
"How can nothing be? It is absurd to believe in the existence of nothingness!" I ventured, setting up a syllogism.
He closed the Bible gently and looked at me with a patience that warned. "Enough, Giacomo. Don't be a fool."
He was not harsh—only convinced.
He enjoyed a good bed, a glass of wine, and cheerfulness at home; but he had no taste for clever jests or criticism, which, he said, turned too easily to slander.
A neighbor once left a gazette; he skimmed a page, smiled, and slid it under the candlestick.
"They print yesterday again," he said. "And again."
Uncertainty, to him, was a pest. "Thinking breeds it; sleep cures it."
Yet when he mounted the pulpit, certainty had a voice.
His face and his tone suited preaching; the nave carried him well.
The congregation was almost entirely women; he would not look them in the face even when he spoke to them.
"Weakness of the flesh," he thundered, "is the triumph of the beast over the soul."
Weakness of the flesh and fornication appeared to him the most monstrous of sins, and he would be very angry if I dared to assert that, in my estimation, they were the most venial of faults.
He loved to stud his homilies with Greek, which he then translated into Latin.
After Mass, in the sacristy, I once said, quietly, "Italian would reach them better. The women understand neither Greek nor Latin."
He took offence, and I never again ventured a remark on the subject.
Yet not long after, I heard him speaking of me to a friend with a pride he tried to disguise.
"The boy," he said, "has taught himself Greek—alone, with nothing but a grammar and a stubborn will."
I pretended not to listen, though I treasured every word.
That winter, our evenings followed a steady order: prayer, supper, and a lesson stretched long into the lamplight.
But one night, after an hour of syllogisms, the doctor closed his book and said quietly,
"You've learned how men reason about heaven and earth, Giacomo. Now it is time to learn how they reason about themselves."
He drew four circles on the paper between us. "This," he said, "is the Ars Vitalis—the art by which body, mind, spirit, and name hold together. All our strength comes from these, and all our weakness from their discord."
He tapped the first circle. "Corpus—the body. Breath governs pulse, pulse governs thought. Soldiers train it before battle; a scholar does well to do the same. A man who rules his breathing rules his fear."
I tried it at once, drawing a careful breath. The air smelled of ink and candle wax, which did little to inspire heroism.
"When the body is in measure," Gozzi continued, "those around you sense it. A steady man steadies others. That is the first resonance."
He passed to the next circle. "Mens—the mind. A mind ordered in its reasoning orders the world about it. When you speak clearly, others lend you their calm; when you speak in confusion, you infect them with it. Most sermons fail from shortness of breath and excess of adjectives."
That earned my first smile of the evening. Gozzi noticed but pretended not to.
"The third," he said, "is Animus—the temper of the soul. Feel too little and you are stone; feel too much and you dissolve. Prayer and confession keep the balance, though I suspect you will prefer argument and laughter."
He was not wrong.
He drew the last circle. "Essentia—that which endures in memory. A man's name, his conduct, the reputation that follows him like a shadow when the body is gone. Every letter you write, every promise you keep or break, shapes that shadow. It is the resonance others carry of you when you are absent."
I must have looked skeptical, for he paused and gave me the kind of smile that invites submission.
"Do you imagine, my boy, that only kings and saints leave an echo? Even the humblest craftsman resonates in the tools he leaves behind."
I nodded, though my gaze lingered on the four circles.
"Body, mind, spirit, name," I murmured. "And if one mastered them all?"
Gozzi chuckled. "Then he would be too wise to speak of it."
He leaned back, satisfied with his diagram.
"There you have the four axes. Keep them in harmony and life proceeds smoothly; allow one to dominate and the rest will warp. Too much Corpus, and you become brute. Too much Mens, and you dry into pedantry. Animus unruled turns zealot; Essentia unruled turns vanity. Dissonance is the root of madness and, worse, ridicule."
He let the chalk rest a moment, then added almost lightly, "Some ancient writers mention a fifth axis—Libertas—but that is philosophy, not instruction. Freedom, they said, is the harmony of the four without constraint. Dangerous nonsense. The Church forbids such speculation; liberty belongs to God alone."
He brushed away the chalk dust as if erasing the very idea.
I asked, "And these ranks you once mentioned at supper—are they earned by mastering the axes?"
"More or less. We are born Apprenti, become Adepti, and if we persevere, die Virtuosi. The rest—Magistri and Luminars—are honorary titles for men grown old and slow enough to be mistaken for wise."
I laughed, which earned me a look of measured disapproval.
"You may laugh," he said, "but harmony is no trifling matter. The world rewards those who keep their pulse even and their tongue moderate. Do not chase miracles, Giacomo. The charlatans who promise power through passion or prayer end their days in asylums or prisons. True cultivation is moderation."
He spoke the word again—moderation—as if it were a charm against every sin of youth.
When he finished, he blew out the taper. The smoke rose in four thin spirals that joined into one, as if demonstrating his lesson in miniature.
We sat a moment in the afterglow. I heard only the faint scrape of his chair and the rustle of papers he gathered before bidding me good night.
I have often recalled that evening.
At the time I was too young to notice the elegance of his reasoning or the fear hidden behind it.
Years later I understood that what he called harmony was both a virtue and a temptation—the comfort of being perfectly arranged inside the cage allotted to us.
Gozzi's four circles were true enough to life: body, mind, spirit, and name do hold a man together.
But somewhere beyond them, faint and irregular as a fifth pulse, there beats another axis—the desire to move one's rhythm faster than the world permits.
He never spoke of it again. I, however, spent my life testing whether that fifth circle was real.
And I suppose, dear reader, that is why my story refuses to end in moderation.