The Pope returned the gems to the beneficiato in attendance: took the Times with Him and went across the basilica into the gardens. A tramontana bit Him to the bone; and He tightly wrapped His cloak round Him, facing the wind and the blinding glare of the sun. He briskly walked a couple of miles, until blood-warmth stung his mind into activity. By Leo IV.'s ruined wall, He met Cardinal Carvale engaged in a similar exercise, his delicate cheeks fervid and flushed, and his grave eyes blazing. Good priests generally retain their bloom through the full five-and-forty years of youth. Hadrian invited his companionship and conversation for the return to Vatican. They were a pair, these two medium-sized slim athletic men, the one in white and the other in vermilion, both very brilliant in the sunlight, with vivid aspect and vivid gait. They looked like men who really were alive. Their discourse was just the vigorous rather epigrammatic talk of wholesome well-bred men. As they turned into the court of the Belvedere, His Eminency said "Oh, by the bye, Holy Father, perhaps I ought to tell you that they cannot understand at St. Andrew's College why You never have been to see them."
"But you understand:" Hadrian promptly put in.
"Well—yes:" the cardinal responded. In his candid gaze there was intuition, sympathy—and something else.
The Pontiff read it. "When did they tell you that?"
"Yesterday."
"Oh. Do you often go there?"
"About once a fortnight, Holiness."
"Carvale, do you like going there?"
"—Yes, on the whole I do. The youngsters are glad to see me; and the older men" (a radiant smile disclosed his exquisite teeth as he spread an arm)—"they like vermilion to take note of them. And I think it does my soul good" (he spoke gravely) "to visit the old place. I put it off as long as I could: I would have been glad to forget the horrors. Strange to say, I forgot them after I had been there a few times."