I 384 ] [Oct. 



POPE GREGORY AND THE PEAR-TREE. 



Hugo Bon Compagno was one of the gayest of the gay children of 

 the south. He had archness and vivacity — a bright eye and a ready 

 tongue. He was the favourite of the neighbours, and was predestined 

 by the monk who taught him Latin, to make a great figure in the world. 

 Hugo had formed a close friendship with a youth about his own age, — 

 the son of a gardener ; in all respects his inferior, save in that plastic 

 quality of temper that moulded itself to the will of others, and which by 

 its docility made, very frequently, a far deeper impression on those who 

 knew him, than the more apt and vivacious qualities of his patronizing 

 companion. However, the two lads were firm friends, and in the day- 

 dreams of boyhood, ere the warm impulses of our nature become chilled 

 in the school of selfishness — ere, in our progress through the world, we 

 imperceptibly imbibe so great a portion of its clay — the youths had but 

 one hope, saw but one fortune for both. Wealth, if they gained any, 

 was to be equally shared by them — honours, if they came, must be par- 

 ticipated by either. So dreamt they in the dehcious time of youth, so 

 lived they in one of the liveliest spots of Italy, — at a village some few 

 miles from Bologna. The world, as yet lay before them, an undis- 

 covered country ; they saw it, as the great navigator saw in his dreams, 

 the distant yet unknown land : a halo of glory was about it — it was rich 

 in fruits and flowers, and spicy forests and mines of gold. 



At length, the time arrived, when this romantic region was to be 

 explored. Hugo was to go into the world. — At the period of which we 

 write, the church was the surest road to honour : and Hugo, as we have 

 before implied, had that keen and subtle temperament, that untiring per- 

 severance, and that aptitude for book-learning, which in those days were 

 considered the indispensable requisites for one who, in ostensibly devot- 

 ing himself to God, sought to grasp at temporal sway ; and who, as he 

 bowed with a seeming inward reverence to the Cross, leered with a miser's 

 eye at iMammon and his heaps. Hugo was devoted to the church : lie 

 quitted his native village, and grown beyond childish years, and having 

 cast away " all childish things,'' he became a monk, and in his function 

 pored over that awful volume, so blotted Avith crime, so stained with 

 tears, so confused, so scrawled with error — that mystery of mysteries — 

 the human heart. Thus he laboured, all his thoughts and feelings at- 

 tuned to one purpose — worldly ambition. His home, his relatives, the 

 companions of his youth, the scenes of his boyhood — all, aU were for- 

 gotten — the monk had killed the man. 



"Well, HuEfo," sad Luigi, with a saddened air — " to-moiTow you 

 quit us : to-morrow you leave the village, and the saints alone know, if 

 we shall ever meet again." 



" ^leet again, Luigi, and whj' not ? — you will come and see me — I 

 shall sometimes come here. We shall see one another often — very often." 



" Yes see one another ! But you will only be to me as the ghost of a 



dead friend !" 



" The ghost of a friend ! Can I ever forget Luigi — my earhest play- 

 mate—the brother of my heart, though not of my blood.? — Trust me, I 

 shall ever love you." 



" A monk love !— a monk has neither parents, nor friends I" 

 " No : he loves, with an equal affection, ;xll mankind !" 



