To you my daring
verses are unleashed,
you I invoke, O Satan,
monarch of the feast.
—“Hymn to Satan,” Giosuè Carducci
The heavy wooden bronze-studded doors of the drab Gymnasium at San Miniato al Tedcesco—a small town affiliated with the bustling city of Pisa and situated some thirty-one kilometers away from that cosmopolitan metropolis on the Arno—swung wide at the close of the school day and disgorged a wild torrent of schoolboys, each short-trousered, white-bloused child clutching a battered leather satchel stuffed with books and papers and pencils. Freed from their tedious studies, at least until the next day, the boys noisily rioted and skylarked joyously across the dusty cobbles of the piazza, enjoying the warm but waning sunlight of this fine April afternoon. Before too long th
