: "But that's very good, that's capital! Oh! your affair is
progressing. Yes, yes, it's progressing marvellously well."

He was exultant, though he allowed no unseemly irony to appear, while his
pleasant, penetrating eyes fathomed the young priest, to ascertain if he
had been brought to the requisite degree of obedience. Had he been
sufficiently wearied, disillusioned and instructed in the reality of
things, for one to finish with him? Had three months' sojourn in Rome
sufficed to turn the somewhat mad enthusiast of the first days into an
unimpassioned or at least resigned being?

However, all at once Monsignor Nani remarked: "But, my dear son, you tell
me nothing of his Eminence Cardinal Sanguinetti."

"The fact is, Monseigneur, that his Eminence is at Frascati, so I have
been unable to see him."

Thereupon the prelate, as if once more postponing the _denouement_ with
the secret enjoyment of an artistic _diplomate_, began to protest,
raising his little plump hands with the anxious air of a man who
considers everything lost: "Oh! but you must see his Eminence; it is
absolutely necessary! Think of it! The Prefect of the Index! We can only
act after your visit to him, for as you have not seen _him_ it is as if
you had seen nobody. Go, go to Frascati, my dear son."

And thereupon Pierre could only bow and reply: "I will go, Monseigneur."

XI.

ALTHOUGH Pierre knew that he would be unable to see Cardinal Sanguinetti
before eleven o'clock, he nevertheless availed himself of an early train,
so that it was barely nine when he alighted at the little station of
Frascati. He had already visited the place during his enforced idleness,
when he had made the classical excursion to the Roman castles which
extend from Frascati to Rocco di Papa, and from Rocco di Papa to Monte
Cavo, and he was now delighted with the prospect of strolling for a
couple of hours along those first slopes of the Alban hills, where,
amidst rushes, olives, and vines, Frascati, like a promontory, overlooks
the immense ruddy sea of the Campagna even as far as Rome, which, six
full leagues away, wears the whitish aspect of a marble isle.

Ah! that charming Frascati, on its greeny knoll at the foot of the wooded
Tusculan heights, with its famous terrace whence one enjoys the finest
view in the world, its old patrician villas with proud and elegant
Renascence facades and magnificent parks, which, planted with cypress,
pine, and ilex, are for ever gree