here'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
the Cardinal a basket of figs and asked him for a certificate in favour
of his young brother, who had been sent to prison for some deed of
violence--a knife thrust if I recollect rightly. However, the Cardinal
absolutely refused him the certificate."

"It's the same man," said Prada, "you may depend on it. He was often at
the Villa Boccanera formerly; for his young brother was gardener there.
But he's now the client, the creature of Cardinal Sanguinetti. Santobono
his name is, and he's a curious character, such as you wouldn't find in
France, I fancy. He lives all alone in that falling hovel, and officiates
at that old chapel of St. Mary in the Fields, where people don't go to
hear mass three times in a year. Yes, it's a perfect sinecure, which with
its stipend of a thousand francs enables him to live there like a peasant
philosopher, cultivating the somewhat extensive garden whose big walls
you see yonder."

The close to which he called attention stretched down the slope behind
the parsonage, without an aperture, like some savage place of refuge into
which not even the eye could penetrate. And all that could be seen above
the left-hand wall was a superb, gigantic fig-tree, whose big leaves
showed blackly against the clear sky. Prada had moved on again, and
continued to speak of Santobono, who evidently interested him. Fancy, a
patriot priest, a Garibaldian! Born at Nemi, in that yet savage nook
among the Alban hills, he belonged to the people and was still near to
the soil. However, he had studied, and knew sufficient history to realise
the past greatness of Rome, and dream of the re-establishment of Roman
dominion