against temptations of every kind, and endeavours to lead a useful life in the public service, no easy matter in the society to which he belongs by birth and position. At last, however, he meets Jeanne Dessalle, a young, fascinating, intellectual and beautiful married woman, whose marriage has been a most unhappy one—she is separated from her husband—and who is an agnostic. They fall in love with one another at first sight, and he becomes the object of the great, absorbing passion of her whole life. They are about to yield to this unconquerable feeling when Piero is called to the bedside of his dying wife. She has recovered her reason at the last and wishes to see him. What they say to each other, the impression made by her purity and trusting sympathy. her Christian resignation to her sad fate, and her holy death, will never fade from his mind, and bring about a complete revulsion of feeling. While praying m the little chapel, close to the Asylum, he has a vision which changes his whole life and Ins outlook on life It culminates in a vision of his death in the habit of a Benedictine monk. At the same time he hears the words, ever after the keynote of his being: "Magister adest et vocal te."
His passion for Jeanne fades away, as it were, into a far-distant and insignificant past. He gives all his possessions to the poor. He commits the written record of his vision to the keeping of a saintly priest, Don Giuseppe Flores, in whom he had previously confided, going to him repeatedly for counsel and ghostly comfort, and then disappears from Brescia, leaving no trace behind him.
Three years are supposed to have passed since Piero's disappearance when the present story opens.
