DOMESTIC DISCORD. 31 



not indisposed to carve out a fortune for themselves or for 

 their children with the knife of the assassin, or to find 

 quiet means of hastening the decease of any sickly youth 

 by whom their way was cumbered. This manner of 

 talking, therefore, on the part of the old man, not only 

 vexed Jerome, but also seriously alarmed his mother, and 

 was the occasion of much violent altercation between 

 Fazio and Clara. They even agreed to separate. In one 

 of these quarrels the passionate woman fell down in a fit, 

 striking her head violently against a paving-stone, and 

 lay for three hours insensible, and foaming at the mouth 1 . 

 The son diverted the attention of his parents from the 

 dispute, of which he was the centre, by simulating a 

 religious zeal, betaking himself to the Franciscans 2 , and 

 making suddenly a bold push to secure for himself proper 

 instruction. His mother, however, would not suffer that 

 he should hide himself from her under the monk's cowl 3 . 

 Having denied to him that easy opportunity of getting 

 forward in the world which the legacy of Ottone Cantone 

 would have afforded, it would have been cruel indeed had 

 Fazio continued to withhold from his son those elements 

 of education that were necessary to his labour for his own 

 subsistence. Jerome had learnt no trade or profession, 



1 De Util. ex Adv. Capiend. p. 429. 



2 Ibid. De Consolatione, p. 74. 



3 " Metuentis matris orbitatem precibus exoratus pater," De Con- 

 solatione, p. 74. 



