“All right, that has nothing to do with calling on him.”
“If you like I will go with you.”
The Cardinal lived in the Palazzo Altemps. That palace is situated in the Via di S. Apellinare, opposite a seminary. The brother and sister proceeded to the palace one morning, went up the grand staircase, and in a reception-room they found Preciozi with two other priests, talking together in low tones.
One was a worn, pallid old man, with his nose and the borders of his nasal appendage extremely red. Cæsar considered that so red a nose in that livid, ghastly face resembled a lantern in a melancholy landscape lighted by the evening twilight. This livid person was the house librarian.
“His Eminence is very busy,” said Preciozi, after bowing to the callers. He spoke with a different voice from the one he used outside. “I will go in, in a moment, and see if you can see him.”
Cæsar stepped to the window of the reception-room: one could see the court of the old palace and the colonnade surrounding it.
“This house must be very large,” he said.
“You shall see it later, if you like,” replied the abbé. A little after this Preciozi disappeared, and reappeared again in the opening of a glass door, saying, in the discreetly lowered voice which was no doubt that of his domestic functions:
“This way, this way.”
They went into a large, cold, shabby room. Through an open door they could see another bare salon, equally dark and sombre.