sit down while the young Monsignore who
had received us in the last saloon went in to know if the Holy Father
were ready to see us.

It was a smaller room--this in which we sat--than the others through
which we had passed, and in which the crimson liveried servants were;
and its walls were all covered with hangings from cornice to floor. That
which was opposite to me presented, I remember, Jacob receiving the
blessing which his brother Esau should have had; and I wondered, as I
sat there, whether I myself were come, as Jacob, to get a blessing to
which I had no right. Idly Lord Abbot said nothing at all; for he was a
stout man and a little out of breath; and almost before he had got it
again, and before I was sure as to whether I were more like to the liar
Jacob, who won a blessing when he should not, or to unspiritual Esau,
who lost a blessing which he should have had, the young Monsignore in
his purple came back again, and, bowing so low that we saw the little
tonsure on the top of his head, beckoned to us to enter.

* * * * *

By the time that, behind my Lord Abbot, I had performed the three
genuflections and, at the third, was kissing the ring of our Most Holy
Lord, I had already taken into my mind something of the room I was in
and of him who sat there, wheeled round in his chair to greet us. The
room was far more plain than I had thought to find it, though pretty
rich too. The walls had sacred hangings upon them; but it was so dark
with the shuttered windows that I could not make out very well what
their subjects were. A dozen damask and gilt chairs stood round the
walls, and three or four tables; and, in the centre of all, where I was
now arrived, stood the greatest table of all, carved of some black wood,
and at the middle of one side the chair in which sat the Holy Father
himself.

He had very kind but very piercing eyes: this was the first thing that I
thought; his hair beneath his cap, as well as his beard, was all
iron-grey; his complexion was a little sallow, and seemed all the more
sallow because of his red velvet cap and white soutane; (for he wore no
cloak because of the heat). As soon as I had kissed his ring he bade me
stand up--(speaking in Italian, as he did all through the audience)--and
then beckoned me to a chair opposite to his, and my Lord Abbot to
another on one side. And then at once he went on to speak of the
business on which we were come--as if he knew al