I Cornelio Grandi who tell you these things have a story of my own of which some of you are not ignorant. You know for one thing that I was not always poor nor always a professor of philosophy nor a scribbler of pedantic articles for a living. Many of you can remember why I was driven to sell my patrimony the dear castello in the Sabines with the good corn-land and the vineyards in the valley and the olives too.