or a priest who did not step out with a pert and jaunty air, his head erect, showing off a well-made leg, and daintily attired in the garb of a clerical dandy.  Their conversation turned upon every possible subject, and sometimes upon quibusdam aliis, to such a degree that it was evident my father was perpetually on thorns.  I remember a certain prelate, whom I will not name, and whose conduct was, I believe, sufficiently free and easy, who at a dinner-party at a villa near Porta Pia related laughingly some matrimonial anecdotes, which I at that time did not fully understand.  And I remember also my poor father’s manifest distress, and his strenuous endeavors to change the conversation and direct it into a different channel.

The prelates and priests whom I used to meet in less orthodox companies than those frequented by my father seemed to me still more free and easy.  Either in the present or in the past, in theory or in practice, with more or less or even no concealment, they all alike were sailing or had sailed on the sweet fleuve du tendre.  For instance, I met one old canon bound to a venerable dame by a tie of many years’ standing.  I also met a young prelate with a pink-and-white complexion and eyes expressive of anything but holiness; he was a desperate votary of the fair sex, and swaggered about paying his homage right and left.  Will it be believed, this gay apostle actually told me, without circumlocution, that in the monastery of Tor di Specchi there dwelt a young lady who was in love with me?  I, who of course desired no better, took the hint instantly, and had her pointed out to me.  Then began an interchange of silly messages, of languishing looks, and a hundred absurdities of the same kind; all cut short by the pair of post-horses which carried us out of the Porta del Popolo....

The opinions of my father respecting the clergy and the Court of Rome were certainly narrow and prejudiced; but with his good sense it was impossible for him not to perceive what was manifest even to a blind man.  During our journey he kept insinuating (without appearing, however, to attach much importance to it) that it was always advisable to speak with proper respect of a country where we had been well received, even if we had noticed a great many abuses and disorders.  To a certain extent, this counsel was well worthy of attention.  He was doubtless much grieved at the want of decency apparent in one section of that society, or, to use a modern expression, at its absence of respectability; but he consoled himself by thinking, like Abraham the Jew in the ‘Decameron,’ that no better proof can be given of the truth of the religion professed by Rome than the fact of its enduring in such hands.

This reasoning, however, is not quite conclusive; for if Boccaccio had had patience to wait another forty years, he would have learnt, first from John Huss, and then from Luther and his followers, that although in certain hands things may last a while, it is only till they are worn out.  What Boccaccio and the Jew would say now if they came back, I do not venture to surmise,