To leave Mondolfo--to go out into that world of which I had read so much; to mingle with my fellow-man, with youths of my own age, perhaps with maidens like Luisina, to see cities and the ways of cities; here indeed was matter for excitement.

Yet it was an excitement not altogether pleasurable; for with my very natural curiosity, and with my eagerness to have it gratified, were blended certain fears imbibed from the only quality of reading that had been mine.
The world was an evil place in which temptations seethed, and through which it was difficult to come unscathed.

Therefore, I feared the world and the adventuring beyond the shelter of the walls of the castle of Mondolfo; and yet I desired to judge for myself the evil of which I read, the evil which in moments of doubt I even permitted myself to question.
My reasoning followed the syllogism that God being good and God having created the world, it was not possible that the creation should be evil.
It was well enough to say that the devil was loose in it.

But that was not to say that the devil had created it; and it would be necessary to prove this ere it could be established that it was evil in itself--as many theologians appeared to seek to show--and a place to be avoided.
Such was the question that very frequently arose in my mind, ultimately to be dismissed as a lure of Satan's to imperil my poor soul.

It battled for existence now amid my fears; and it gained some little ascendancy.
"And whither am I to go ?" I asked.