Within a week I had read the Aeneid through, and was reading it a second time.

Then came the Comedies of Terence, the Metamorphoses of Ovid, Martial, and the Satires of Juvenal.

And with those my transformation was complete.

No longer could I find satisfaction in the writings of the fathers of the church, or in contemplating the lives of the saints, after the pageantries which the eyes of my soul had looked upon in the profane authors.
What instructions my mother supposed Fifanti to have received concerning me from Arcolano, I cannot think.

But certain it is that she could never have dreamed under what influences I was so soon to come, no more than she could conceive what havoc they played with all that hitherto I had learnt and with the resolutions that I had formed--and that she had formed for me--concerning the future.
All this reading perturbed me very oddly, as one is perturbed who having long dwelt in darkness is suddenly brought into the sunlight and dazzled by it, so that, grown conscious of his sight, he is more effectively blinded than he was before.