“This Benedictine cardinal is an impious fellow after all; he is on his death-bed, and he has asked for the viaticum, without wishing to purify his soul by confession.”

I did not make any remark, but feeling as if I should like to know the truth of the matter I asked somebody about it next day, my informant being a person who must have known the truth, and could not have had any motive for disguising the real facts of the case.  He told me that the cardinal had said mass three days before, and that if he had not asked for a confessor it was doubtless because he had nothing to confess.

Unfortunate are they that love the truth, and do not seek it out at its source.  I hope the reader will pardon this digression, which is not without interest.

Next day I went to see Cardinal Passionei, who told me I was quite right to come early, as he wanted to learn all about my escape from The Leads, of which he had heard some wonderful tales told.

“I shall be delighted to satisfy your eminence, but the story is a long one.”

“All the better; they say you tell it well.”

“But, my lord, am I to sit down on the floor?”

“No, no; your dress is too good for that.”

He rang his bell, and having told one of his gentlemen to send up a seat, a servant brought in a stool.  A seat without a back and without arms!  It made me quite angry.  I cut my story short, told it badly, and had finished in a quarter of an hour.

“I write better than you speak,” said he.

“My lord, I never speak well except when I am at my ease.”

“But you are not afraid of me?”

“No, my lord, a true man and a philosopher can never make me afraid; but this stool of yours . . . .”

“You like to be at your ease, above all things.”

“Take this, it is the funeral oration of Prince Eugene; I make you a present of it.  I hope you will approve of my Latinity.  You can kiss the Pope’s feet tomorrow at ten o’clock.”

When I got home, as I reflected on the character of this strange cardinal—­a wit, haughty, vain, and boastful, I resolved to make him a fine present.  It was the ‘Pandectarum liber unicus’ which M. de F. had given me at Berne, and which I did not know what to do with.  It was a folio well printed on fine paper, choicely bound, and in perfect preservation.  As chief librarian the present should be a valuable one to him, all the more as he had a large private library, of which my friend the Abbe Winckelmann was librarian.  I therefore wrote a short Latin letter, which I enclosed in another to Winckelmann, whom I begged to present my offering to his eminence.

I thought it was as valuable as his funeral oration at any rate, and I hoped that he would give me a more comfortable chair for the future.

Next morning, at the time appointed, I went to Monte Cavallo, which ought to be called Monte Cavalli, as it gets its name from two fine statues of horses standing on a pedestal in the midst of the square, where the Holy Father’s palace is situated.