ood. I will do it, and you shall present me as candidate for
Castro... Castro... what?"

"Castro Duro."

"You will see me there then."

"All right. And now, another favour. There is a Canon from Zamora here,
a friend of mine, who came on the pilgrimage and who desires nothing
so much as to see Saint Peter's and the Catacombs rather thoroughly. I
could explain everything to him, but I am not sure about the dates. Will
you come with us?"

"With great pleasure."

"Then we shall expect you here at ten."

"That will be fine."

Sure enough, at ten Caesar was there. Don Calixto and his friend the
Canon Don Justo, who was a large gentleman, tall and fleshy and with a
long nose, were waiting. The three got into the carriage.

"I hope this priest isn't going to be one of those library rats who
know everything on earth," thought Caesar, but when he heard him make a
couple of mistakes in grammar, he became tranquil.

_THEODORA AND MAROZIA_

As they passed the Castel Sant' Angelo, Caesar began to tell the story
of Theodora and her daughter Marozia, the two women who lived there and
who, for forty odd years, changed the Popes as one changes cooks.

"You know the history of those women?" asked Caesar.

"I don't," said the Canon.

"Nor I," added Don Calixto.

"Then I will tell it to you before we get to Saint Peter's. Theodora, an
influential lady, fell in love with a young priest of Ravenna, and had
him elected Pope, by the name of John X. Her daughter Marozia, a young
girl and a virgin, gave herself to Pope Sergius III, a capricious,
fantastic man, who had once had the witty idea of digging up Pope
Formosus and subjecting him, putrefied as he was, to the judgment of
a Synod. By this eccentric man Marozia had a son, and afterwards was
married three times more. She exercised an omnipotent sway over the Holy
See. John X, her mother's lover, she deposed and sent to die in prison.
With his successor, Leo VI, whom she herself had appointed Pope, she
did the same. The following Pope, Stephen VII, died of illness, twenty
months after his reign began, and then Marozia gave the Papal crown to
the son she had had by Sergius III, who took the name of John XI. This
Pope and his brother Alberic, began to feel their mother's influence
rather heavy, and during a popular revolt they decided to get Marozia
into their power, and they seized her and buried her alive in the _in
pace_ of a convent."

"But is all this authentic?" aske