often passes along a kind of
open gallery leading towards the Mint. "Well, let us go down as well,"
said Narcisse to Pierre; "I will try to show you the gardens."

Down below, in the vestibule, a door of which opened on to a broad path,
he spoke to another attendant, a former pontifical soldier whom he
personally knew. The man at once let him pass with Pierre, but was unable
to tell him whether Monsignor Gamba del Zoppo had accompanied his
Holiness that day.

"No matter," resumed Narcisse when he and his companion were alone in the
path; "I don't despair of meeting him--and these, you see, are the famous
gardens of the Vatican."

They are very extensive grounds, and the Pope can go quite two and a half
miles by passing along the paths of the wood, the vineyard, and the
kitchen garden. Occupying the plateau of the Vatican hill, which the
medieval wall of Leo IV still girdles, the gardens are separated from the
neighbouring valleys as by a fortified rampart. The wall formerly
stretched to the castle of Sant' Angelo, thereby forming what was known
as the Leonine City. No inquisitive eyes can peer into the grounds
excepting from the dome of St. Peter's, which casts its huge shadow over
them during the hot summer weather. They are, too, quite a little world,
which each pope has taken pleasure in embellishing. There is a large
parterre with lawns of geometrical patterns, planted with handsome palms
and adorned with lemon and orange trees in pots; there is a less formal,
a shadier garden, where, amidst deep plantations of yoke-elms, you find
Giovanni Vesanzio's fountain, the Aquilone, and Pius IV's old Casino;
then, too, there are the woods with their superb evergreen oaks, their
thickets of plane-trees, acacias, and pines, intersected by broad
avenues, which are delightfully pleasant for leisurely strolls; and
finally, on turning to the left, beyond other clumps of trees, come the
kitchen garden and the vineyard, the last well tended.

Whilst walking through the wood Narcisse told Pierre of the life led by
the Holy Father in these gardens. He strolls in them every second day
when the weather allows. Formerly the popes left the Vatican for the
Quirinal, which is cooler and healthier, as soon as May arrived; and
spent the dog days at Castle Gandolfo on the margins of the Lake of
Albano. But nowadays the only summer residence possessed by his Holiness
is a virtually intact tower of the old rampart of Leo IV. He here spends