Hadrian's heart informed Him. He understood it all quite well. "Carvale let us go to St. Andrew's now. We can get there in time for dinner."
The cardinal instantly looked happy; and the two continued to walk swiftly through the City, going by Tordinona, Orso, Piazza Colonna and the Trevi Fountain. As they passed the crucifix at the corner of an alley, Hadrian bowed. His Eminency did not. "Why don't you salute our Divine Redeemer?" the Pope inquired.
"Well of course I always raise my hat to The Lord in the tabernacle when I pass a church——"
"And you bow to Us, and even to Our handwriting: but—— Listen, Carvale: 'It is idolatry to talk about Holy Church and Holy Father, to bow to fallible sinful man, if you do not bend knee and lip and heart to every thought and image of God manifest as Man——' Is that explicit enough? Well; it was a protestant parson who wrote it—one Arnold of Rugby."
"He was right, Holiness;" said the cardinal turning back and bowing.
They walked on in silence. The Pope was doing a thing which He could not away with. It might be thought that He, a former student, was come to the college (which had expelled Him) to swagger. Of course it would be thought. Let it be thought. Then the hateful memory of every nook and corner, in which, as a student, He had been so fearfully unhappy, surged in His mind: the gaudy chapel where He had received this snub, the ugly refectory where He received that, the corridor where the rector had made coarse jests about His mundity to obsequious grinners, the library where He had found impossible dust-begrimed books, the stairs up which He had staggered in lonely weakness, the dreadful gaunt room which had been His homeless home, the altogether pestilent pretentious bestial insanity of the place—He knew and winced at every stone of it; and wrenched Himself from retrospection. They were going up the narrow Avigonesi. Fifty yards in front, a double file of students in violet cassocks and black sopranos preceded them. A little group of ragamuffins shouted cattivi verbi at the file; and one caught hold of the conventional sleeve of a student's soprano which was streaming in the wind. Cheap cloth rent at a tug. The ragamuffin rushed off with his spoils. But the bereft one furiously followed: retrieved his streamer; and clouted a head which howled, resuming his place in the camerata all unconscious that his act had been observed.
"History repeats itself:" the Pope said, and laughed.
Carvale smiled in reply. "Fancy remembering that."
"We forget no one thing of those days," said Hadrian: "also, the rape of Your Eminency's streamer was effected on one of the only two days when We were permitted to accompany the others to the University. Naturally We remember that. Besides, Carvale, you were in such a blind and naked rage; and We had deemed you such a virtuous little mouse."
"Was I?" the cardinal said. "One had to lie low, as a rule: but sometimes the old Adam——"