hat dreary drawing-room, where for a couple of hours
he had been gradually sinking into despair! So at last a solution was at
hand!

Meantime Narcisse, after shaking hands with Dario and bowing to Benedetta
and Celia, approached his uncle the Cardinal, who, having rid himself of
the old relation, made up his mind to talk. But his conversation was
confined to the state of his health, and the weather, and sundry
insignificant anecdotes which he had lately heard. Not a word escaped him
respecting the thousand complicated matters with which he dealt at the
Propaganda. It was as though, once outside his office, he plunged into
the commonplace and the unimportant by way of resting from the anxious
task of governing the world. And after he had spoken for a time every one
got up, and the visitors took leave.

"Don't forget," Narcisse repeated to Pierre, "you will find me at the
Sixtine Chapel to-morrow at ten. And I will show you the Botticellis
before we go to our appointment."

At half-past nine on the following morning Pierre, who had come on foot,
was already on the spacious Piazza of St. Peter's; and before turning to
the right, towards the bronze gate near one corner of Bernini's
colonnade, he raised his eyes and lingered, gazing at the Vatican.
Nothing to his mind could be less monumental than the jumble of buildings
which, without semblance of architectural order or regularity of any
kind, had grown up in the shadow cast by the dome of the basilica. Roofs
rose one above the other and broad, flat walls stretched out chance-wise,
just as wings and storeys had been added. The only symmetry observable
above the colonnade was that of the three sides of the court of San
Damaso, where the lofty glass-work which now encloses the old _loggie_
sparkled in the sun between the ruddy columns and pilasters, suggesting,
as it were, three huge conservatories.

And this was the most beautiful palace in the world, the largest of all
palaces, comprising no fewer than eleven thousand apartments and
containing the most admirable masterpieces of human genius! But Pierre,
disillusioned as he was, had eyes only for the lofty facade on the right,
overlooking the piazza, for he knew that the second-floor windows there
were those of the Pope's private apartments. And he contemplated those
windows for a long time, and remembered having been told that the fifth
one on the right was that of the Pope's bed-room, and that a lamp could
always be se