There was a murmur of astonishment as the young face appeared in the tribunal of that grave assembly.
\"Impossible! It is only a child!\"
It was, in truth, a strange picture; this child of thirteen, small and delicate for his years, yet with a face of singular freshness and gravity, his youthfulness heightened by cassock and cowl—a unique, simple figure, against the bizarre magnificence of the background, the central point of interest for that learned and brilliant assembly, as he stood there above the beautiful kneeling angel who held the Book of the Law, just under the pulpit.
For a moment he seemed unable to face his audience, then, with an effort, he raised his hand, nervously pushing back the white folds of his unaccustomed cowl, and casting a look of perplexity over the sea of faces before him; but the expression of trouble slowly cleared away as his eyes met those of a friar, grave and bent, who had stepped out from the company of the Servi and fixed upon the boy a steadying gaze of assurance, triumph, and command. It was Fra Gianmaria, who was known throughout Venice for his great learning.
\"Pierino!\" broke from the mother, in a tone of quick emotion, as she saw her boy for the first time in the dress of his order, which thrust, as it were, the claims of her motherhood quite away; it was so soon to surrender all the beautiful romance of mother and child, so soon to have done with the joy of watching the development which had long outstripped her leadership, so soon to consent to the absolute parting of the ways!
She had not willed it so, and she was weary from the struggle.
But the boy was satisfied; the presence of his stern and learned mentor sufficed to restore his composure; he did not even see his mother''''s face so near him, piteous in its appeal for a single glance to confess his need of her.
\"Nay, have no fear,\" Don Ambrogio counseled, his face glowing with pride; \"the boy is a wonder.\"
The good Fra Giulio, turning back from the pulpit stairs, saw the faces of the two whose hearts were hanging on the words of the child; he went directly to them and sat down beside Donna Isabella, for he had a tender heart and he guessed her trouble. \"I also,\" he said, leaning over her and speaking low, \"I also love the boy, and while I live will I care for him. He shall lack for nothing.\"
It was a promise of great comfort; for Pierino—she could not call him by the new name—would need such loving care; already the mother''''s pulse beat more tranquilly, and she almost smiled her gratitude in the large-hearted friar''''s face.
Then Fra Gianmaria, his mentor, seeing that the boy had gained courage, came also to a seat beside Donna Isabella, with a look of radiant congratulation; for he had been the boy''''s teacher ever since the little lad had passed beyond the limits of Don Ambrogio''''s modest attainments. Although she had resented the power of Fra Gianmaria over Pierino, she was proud of the confidence of the learned friar in her child; already she began to teach herself to accept pride in the place of the lowlier, happier, daily love she must learn to do without. Her face grew colder and more composed; Don Ambrogio gave her a nod of approval.
\"It is Pierino!\" the bare-legged Beppo proclaimed, pushing his way between dignitaries and elegant nobles and taking a position, in wide-eyed astonishment, in front of the pulpit, where he could watch every movement of his quondam school-fellow, whose words carried no meaning to his unlearned ears. But his heart throbbed with sudden loyalty in seeing his comrade the centre of such a festa; Beppo would stay and help him to get fair play, if he should need it, since it was well known that Pierino could not fight, for all his Latin!
But the little fellow in robe and cowl had neither eyes nor thoughts for his vast audience when he once gathered courage to begin—no memory for the pride of his teachers, no perception of his mother''''s yearning; shrinking and timid as he was, the first voicing of his own thought, in his childish treble voice, put him in presence of a problem and banished all other consciousness. It was merely a question to be met and answered, and his wonderful reasoning faculty stilled every other emotion. His voice grew positive as his thought asserted itself; his learning was a mystery, but argument after argument was met and conquered with the quoted wisdom of unanswerable names.
One after another the great men left the choir and came down into the area before the pulpits, that they might lose nothing.
One after another the Frari chose out champions to confute the child-philosopher, but he was armed on every side; and the childish face, the boyish manner and voice lent a wonderful charm to the words he uttered, which were not eloquent, but absolutely dispassionate and reasonable, and the fewest by which he might prove his claim.
Again and again his audience forgot themselves in murmurs of applause, rising beyond decorum, and once into a storm of approbation; then his timidity returned, he became self-conscious, fumbling with the white cowl that hung partly over his face, forgetting that it was not a hat, and gravely taking it off in salute.
The next day it was proclaimed on the Piazza, as a bit of news for the people of Venice—for which, indeed, those who had not witnessed the contest in the church of the Frari cared little and understood nothing—that \"in the Philosophical Contest which had taken place between the Friars of the Frari and the Friars of the Servi, the victory had been won by Fra Paolo Sarpi, of the Servi, who had honorably triumphed through his vast understanding of the wisdom of the Fathers of the Church.\"
This was also published in the black frame beside the great door of the Frari and posted upon the entrance to the church of the Servi, while in the refectories of the respective convents it formed a theme of absorbing interest.
The Frari discussed the possibilities of childish mouthpieces for learned doctors, miraculously concealed—but low, for fear of scandal. The Servi said it out, for all to hear, \"that it was a modern wonder of a Child in the Temple!\"
But Fra Gianmaria hushed them, and was afraid; for often while he taught he came upon some new surprise, for he perceived that the boy''''s mind held some hidden spring of knowledge which was to him unfathomable.
\"It is most wonderful,\" he said one evening to Fra Giulio, as they talked together in the cloister after vespers; \"I solemnly declare that it hath happened to me to ask him a question of which I, verily, knew not the answer; and he, keeping in quiet thought for some moments, hath so lucidly responded that his words have carried with them the conviction that he had made a discovery which I knew not.\"
\"It is some lesson which Don Ambrogio hath taught him.\"
\"Not so—for Don Ambrogio hath little learning; but Paolo will cover us with honor. In learning he is never weary, yet hath he an understanding greater than mine own, and in docility he hath no equal. In his duty in the convent and in the church he is even more punctilious.\"
\"Is it strange—or is it well,\" asked Fra Giulio with hesitation, \"that in this year he hath spent with us he asks not for his mother, nor the little maid his sister, nor seemeth to grieve for them? For the boy is young.\"
\"Nay,\" answered Fra Gianmaria, sternly; \"it is no lack, but a grace that hath been granted him.\"
\"Knowledge is a wonderful mystery,\" Fra Giulio answered; but softly to himself, as he crossed the cloister, he added, \"but love is sweet, and the boy is very young.\"
The boy was kneeling placidly before the crucifix in his cell when Fra Giulio went to give him his nightly benediction; but the good friar''''s heart was troubled with tenderness because of a vision, that would not leave him, of a hungering mother''''s face.