It is further related that the pope, made curious, desired to inspect this Devil's drink, and had some brought to him. The aroma of it was so pleasant and inviting that the pope was tempted to try a cupful. After drinking it, he exclaimed, "Why, this Satan's drink is so delicious that it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it. We shall fool Satan by baptizing it, and making it a truly Christian beverage." Thus, whatever harmfulness its opponents try to attribute to coffee, the fact remains (if we are to credit the story) that it has been baptized and proclaimed unharmful, and a "truly Christian beverage," by his holiness the pope. The Venetians had further knowledge of coffee in 1585, when Gianfrancesco Morosini, city magistrate at Constantinople, reported to the Senate that the Turks "drink a black water as hot as they can suffer it, which is the infusion of a bean called _cavee_, which is said to possess the virtue of stimulating mankind." Dr. A. Couguet, in an Italian review, asserts that Europe's first cup of coffee was sipped in Venice, toward the close of the sixteenth century. He is of the opinion that the first berries were imported by Mocengio, who was called the _pevere_, because he made a huge fortune trading in spices and other specialties of the Orient. In 1615 Pierre (Pietro) Delia Valle (1586-1652), the well known Italian traveler and author of _Travels in India and Persia_, wrote a letter from Constantinople to his friend Mario Schipano at Venice: The Turks have a drink of black color, which during the summer is very cooling, whereas in the winter it heats and warms the body, remaining always the same beverage and not changing its substance. They swallow it hot as it comes from the fire and they drink it in long draughts, not at dinner time, but as a kind of dainty and sipped slowly while talking with one's friends. One cannot find any meetings among them where they drink it not.... With this drink, which they call _cahue_, they divert themselves in their conversations.... It is made with the grain or fruit of a certain tree called _cahue_.... When I return I will bring some with me and I will impart the knowledge to the Italians. [Illustration: NOBILITY IN AN EARLY VENETIAN CAFFE From the Grevembroch collection in the Museo Civico] Della Valle's countrymen, however, were in a fair way to become well acquainted with the beverage, for already (1615) it had been introduced into Venice. At first it was used largely for medicinal purposes; and high prices were charged for it. Vesling says of its use in Europe as a medicine, "the first step it made from the cabinets of the curious, as an exotic seed, being into the apothecaries' shops as a drug."