It is no wonder that Jacopone, that "smart" thirteenth-century Italian
lawyer, became a great saint when he made that discovery, after his
beautiful young wife's accidental death. It would make a saint of
anybody.
I am quite sure Gertrude is not like that. But then Gertrude is not my
wife--as yet. Nor am I Jacopone. I am nothing more, I fear, than a
contented voluptuary of a bookworm. Like King James, I feel that were
it my fate to be a captive, I should wish to be shut up in a great
library consuming my days among my fellow-prisoners, the blessed books.
To distil the reading of a lifetime into a little wisdom for my poor
wits, that has been all my aim and my ambition, if by any name so
dynamic as ambition I may call it. An old young man is what I have been
called, and Gertrude seems propelled by some potent urge to change
me--God knows why.