"Pray tell Count Orlando," responded Pierre, "that I have not forgotten
him, and that, if I have deferred a fresh visit, it is because I desire
to satisfy him. However, I certainly will not leave Rome without going to
tell him how deeply his kind greeting has touched me."

Whilst talking, the two men slowly followed the ascending road past the
newly erected villas, several of which were not yet finished. And when
Prada learned that the priest had come to call on Cardinal Sanguinetti,
he again laughed, with the laugh of a good-natured wolf, showing his
white fangs. "True," he exclaimed, "the Cardinal has been here since the
Pope has been laid up. Ah! you'll find him in a pretty fever."

"Why?"

"Why, because there's bad news about the Holy Father this morning. When I
left Rome it was rumoured that he had spent a fearful night."

So speaking, Prada halted at a bend of the road, not far from an antique
chapel, a little church of solitary, mournful grace of aspect, on the
verge of an olive grove. Beside it stood a ruinous building, the old
parsonage, no doubt, whence there suddenly emerged a tall, knotty priest
with coarse and earthy face, who, after roughly locking the door, went
off in the direction of the town.

"Ah!" resumed the Count in a tone of raillery, "that fellow's heart also
must be beating violently; he's surely gone to your Cardinal in search of
news."

Pierre had looked at the priest. "I know him," he replied; "I saw him, I
remember, on the day after my arrival at Cardinal Boccanera's. He brought