Gamba, it appeared, owed his early schooling to a Jesuit priest who, visiting the foundling asylum, had been struck by the child’s quickness, and had taken him home and bred him to be a clerk.  The priest’s death left his charge adrift, with a smattering of scholarship above his station, and none to whom he could turn for protection.  For a while he had lived, as he said, like a street-cat, picking up a meal where he could, and sleeping in church porches and under street-arcades, till one of the Duke’s servants took pity on him and he was suffered to hang about the palace and earn his keep by doing the lacquey’s errands.  The Duke’s attention having been called to him as a lad of parts, his Highness had given him to the Marquess of Cerveno, in whose service he remained till shortly before that young nobleman’s death.  The hunchback passed hastily over this period; but his reticence was lit by the angry flash of his eyes.  After the Marquess’s death he had lived for a while from hand to mouth, copying music, writing poetry for weddings and funerals, doing pen-and-ink portraits at a scudo apiece, and putting his hand to any honest job that came his way.  Count Trescorre, who now and then showed a fitful recognition of the tie that was supposed to connect them, at length heard of the case to which he was come and offered him a trifling pension.  This the hunchback refused, asking instead to be given some fixed employment.  Trescorre then obtained his appointment as assistant to the Duke’s librarian, a good old priest engrossed in compiling the early history of Pianura from the ducal archives; and this post Gamba had now filled for two years.

“It must,” said Odo, “be one singularly congenial to you, if, as I have heard, you are of a studious habit.  Though I suppose,” he tentatively added, “the library is not likely to be rich in works of the new scientific and philosophic schools.”

His companion received this observation in silence; and after a moment Odo continued:  “I have a motive in asking, since I have been somewhat deeply engaged in the study of these writers, and my dearest wish is to continue while in Pianura my examination of their theories, and if possible to become acquainted with any who share their views.”

He was not insensible of the risk of thus opening himself to a stranger; but the sense of peril made him the more eager to proclaim himself on the side of the cause he seemed to have deserted.

Gamba turned as he spoke, and their eyes met in one of those revealing glances that lay the foundations of friendship.

“I fear, Cavaliere,” said the hunchback with a smile, “that you will find both branches of investigation somewhat difficult to pursue in Pianura; for the Church takes care that neither the philosophers nor their books shall gain a footing in our most Christian state.  Indeed,” he added, “not only must the library be free from heretical works, but the librarian clear of heretical leanings; and since you have honoured me with your confidence I will own that, the court having got wind of my supposed tendency to liberalism, I live in daily expectation of dismissal.  For the moment they are content to keep their spies on me; but were it not for the protection of the good abate, my superior, I should long since have been turned out.”