; "I can understand that, but I will give no
certificate."

"What! does your most reverend Eminence refuse my prayer?"

"Absolutely! I know that you are a priest of perfect morality, that you
discharge the duties of your ministry with strict punctuality, and that
you would be deserving of high commendation were it not for your
political fancies. Only your fraternal affection is now leading you
astray. I cannot tell a lie to please you."

Santobono gazed at him in real stupefaction, unable to understand that a
prince, an all-powerful cardinal, should be influenced by such petty
scruples, when the entire question was a mere knife thrust, the most
commonplace and frequent of incidents in the yet wild land of the old
Roman castles.

"A lie! a lie!" he muttered; "but surely it isn't lying just to say what
is good of a man, leaving out all the rest, especially when a man has
good points as Agostino certainly has. In a certificate, too, everything
depends on the words one uses."

He stubbornly clung to that idea; he could not conceive that a person
should refuse to soften the rigour of justice by an ingenious
presentation of the facts. However, on acquiring a certainty that he
would obtain nothing, he made a gesture of despair, his livid face
assuming an expression of violent rancour, whilst his black eyes flamed
with restrained passion.

"Well, well! each looks on truth in his own way," he said. "I shall go
back to tell his Eminence Cardinal Sanguinetti. And I beg your Eminence
not to be displeased with me for having disturbed your Eminence to no
purpose. By the way, perhaps the figs are not yet quite ripe; but I will
take the liberty to bring another basketful towards the end of the
season, when they will be quite nice and sweet. A thousand thanks and a
thousand felicities to your most reverend Eminence."

Santobono went off backwards, his big bony figure bending double with
repeated genuflections. Pierre, whom the scene had greatly interested, in
him beheld a specimen of the petty clergy of Rome and its environs, of
whom people had told him before his departure from Paris. This was not
the _scagnozzo_, the wretched famished priest whom some nasty affair
brings from the provinces, who seeks his daily bread on the pavements of
Rome; one of the herd of begowned beggars searching for a livelihood
among the crumbs of Church life, voraciously fighting for chance masses,
and mingling with the lowest orders in taverns of th