Ah! you'll find him in a pretty fever." "Why ?" "Why, because there's bad news about the Holy Father this morning.

When I left Rome it was rumoured that he had spent a fearful night." So speaking, Prada halted at a bend of the road, not far from an antique chapel, a little church of solitary, mournful grace of aspect, on the verge of an olive grove.

Beside it stood a ruinous building, the old parsonage, no doubt, whence there suddenly emerged a tall, knotty priest with coarse and earthy face, who, after roughly locking the door, went off in the direction of the town.
"Ah!" resumed the Count in a tone of raillery, "that fellow's heart also must be beating violently; he's surely gone to your Cardinal in search of news." Pierre had looked at the priest.

"I know him," he replied; "I saw him, I remember, on the day after my arrival at Cardinal Boccanera's.

He brought the Cardinal a basket of figs and asked him for a certificate in favour of his young brother, who had been sent to prison for some deed of violence--a knife thrust if I recollect rightly.