My father, who disliked all women except my mother, and, Catholic as he was, had scant respect for the mendicant orders, hated this dream, hated to be reminded of it, hated the name which he had been persuaded into giving me, and, as a consequence, I believe, never loved me. For unnumbered generations of our family we had been Antonys, Gerards, Ralphs, Martins; the name of Francis was unknown to the tree; he never ceased to inveigh against it, and foretold the time when it would stand out like a parasite upon its topmost shoot. "Your Italian ecstatic," he told my mother, "began life by running away from his father and only came back for the purpose of robbing him. He taught more people to live by singing hymns than ever were taught before, and preached the virtues of poverty, by which he intended the comfort it was for the blessed poor to be kept snugly idle by the accursed rich. It never occurred to him to reflect that, if everybody had been of his opinion, everybody would have starved, the world would have stood still, and neither St. Ferdinand of Spain, nor St. Edward the Confessor, nor Don John of Austria could have become famous. As for your women and apples, the conjunction is detestable. Cain was the result of one woman's desire for an apple, and the siege of Troy that of another's. I don't wish this boy to grow up either murderer or pretty Paris."
The like of this speech, often repeated--indeed, never omitted when so I happened to fall into some childish disgrace--may be imagined. It made an outcast of me, an exile from my nursery days. I grew up lonely, sullen, moody. I could not meet my father with any comfort to either of us; and though I loved my mother, and she me, that cold shadow of his prejudice seemed to be over my intercourse with her, to chill and check those emotions which should glow naturally when a son stands in the presence of his mother. To be brief, I was an unhappy, solitary lad, with sisters much older and brothers much younger than himself; cut off, too, by reason of religion, from the society of neighbours, from school and college. Such companions as I could have were far below me in station, and either so servile as to foster pride, or so insolent as to inflame it. There was Father Danvers, it's true, that excellent Jesuit and our chaplain; and there were books. I was by nature a strong, healthy, active boy, but was driven by sheer solitariness to be studious. If it had not turned out so, I know not what might have become of me, at what untimely age I might have been driven to violence, crime, God knows what. That there was danger of some such disaster Father Danvers was well aware. My faults, as he did not fail to remind me week by week, were obstinacy and pride of intellect; my weaknesses, lack of proportion and what he was pleased to call perversity, by which I suppose he meant a disposition to accept the consequences of my own acts. I freely admit a personal trait which will be obvious as I proceed. Trivial as it may seem, and does, at this time of writing, I must record an instance of it, the last I was to exhibit in England. Never vicious, I may sincerely say convinced, rather, that women are as far above our spiritual as they are fatally within our material reach, it was by my conduct to a woman that I fell into a way of life which nobody could have anticipated. In my twentieth year, in a moment of youthful ardour, I kissed Betty Coy, our dairymaid, over the cheese- press, and was as immediately and as utterly confounded as she was. I remember the moment, I remember her, a buxom, fresh-coloured young woman, rosy red, her sleeves above her elbows, her "La, Mr. Francis, what next?"--I remember all, even to my want of breath, suddenly cooled passion, perplexity and flight. It is a moot point whether that last was the act of a coward, but I can never allow it to be said that in what followed I showed a want of courage. I devoted a day and night to solitary meditation; no knight errant of old, watching his arms under the moon, prayed more earnestly than I; and when I had fully made up my mind to embrace what honour demanded of me, I sought out the girl, who was again in the dairy, and in solemn form, upon my knees, offered her my hand. Father Danvers, walking the terrace, was an accidental witness of my declaration, and very properly told my father. Betty Coy, unfortunate girl, was dismissed that evening; next day my father sent for me. [Footnote: I need only say further of Betty that she, shortly afterwards, married James Bunce, our second coachman at Upcote, and bore him a numerous progeny, of whose progress and settlement in the world I was able to assure the worthy parents.]
It would be idle to rehearse the interview between an angry father and an obdurate son. The more I said the angrier he got: the discrepancy between us made a reasonable conclusion hopeless from the first. When he cried, Did I mean to disgrace my name? and I replied, No, but on the contrary I had been wishful to redeem it--"How, you fool," said he, "by marrying a dairymaid?" "Sir," I answered, "by showing to the world that when a gentleman salutes a virtuous female it is not his intention to insult her." I was too old for the rod or I should have had it. As it was, I received all the disgrace he could put me to--dismissed from his presence, confined to my room, forbidden any society but that of Father Danvers and my own thoughts. My infatuation, however, persisted, and threatened to take the dangerous form of FRAUD. I could not for the life of me see what else I could do to recover the girl's fair fame, hopelessly compromised by me, than exhibit to the world at large the only conceivable motive of my salute. I knew, immediately I had done it, that I could not love Betty Coy, but I believed that I could prove the tender husband.
Correspondence to this effect--all on my side--with her parents decided mine to hasten my removal abroad. It had always been intended that I should study in Padua, rather than in Paris or Salamanca, if for no better reason than that that had been Father Danvers' University, and that he knew many of the professors there--among others, Dr. Porfirio Lanfranchi, who became my host and guardian, and had been class-mate and room-mate of our chaplain's. These things matter very little: I was not consulted in them, and had no objections, as I had no inclinations, for any particular residence in the world. Before my twenty-first birthday-- I forget the exact date--the hour arrived when I received on my knees my mother's tearful blessing, embraced my brothers and sisters, kissed my father's hand, and departed for Oxford, where I caught the London mail; and, after a short sojourn in the capital, left England for ever.
I conceive that few further prolegomena are necessary to the understanding of the pages which follow. Before I touched the Italian soil I was, in the eyes of our law, a grown man, sufficiently robust and moderately well-read. I was able to converse adequately in French, tolerably in Italian, had a fair acquaintance with the literatures of those countries, some Latin, a poor stock of Greek. I believe that I looked younger than my age, stronger than my forces, better than my virtues warranted. Women have praised me for good looks, which never did me any good that I know of; I may say without vanity that I had the carriage and person of a gentleman. I was then, as I have ever been, truly religious, though I have sometimes found myself at variance with the professional exponents of it. In later years I became, I believe, something of a mystic, apt to find the face of God under veils whose quality did not always commend itself to persons of less curious research. On the other hand, I do not pretend to have kept the Decalogue of Moses in its integrity, but admit that I have varied it as my occasions seemed to demand. I have slain my fellow-man more than once, but never without deliberate intention so to do. If I have trespassed with King David of Israel, I feel sure that the circumstances of my particular offence are not