Now it so happened that Kublai sought for himself and his people the faith of Christ, and wanted the pope to send him a hundred priests, so he despatched these Italian gentlemen as his ambassadors to the court of Rome. He gave them a passport engraved on a slab of gold, commanding his subjects to help the envoys upon their way with food and horses, and thus, traveling in state across Asia, the Polos returned from a journey, the greatest ever made up to that time by any Christian men. At Venice, Nicolo, the elder of the brothers, found that his wife had died leaving to him a son, then aged sixteen, young Marco Polo, a gallant, courageous, hardy lad, it seems, and very truthful, without the slightest symptoms of any sense of humor. The schoolboy who defined the Vatican as a great empty space without air, was perfectly correct, for when the Polos arrived there was a sort of vacuum in Rome, the pope being dead and no new appointment made because the electors were squabbling. Two years the envoys waited, and when at last a new pope was elected, he proved to be a friend of theirs, the legate Theobald on whom they waited at the Christian fortress of Acre in Palestine. But instead of sending a hundred clergymen to convert the Mongol empire, the new pope had only one priest to spare, who proved to be a coward, and deserted. Empty handed, their mission a failure, the Polos went back, a three and one-half years’ journey to Pekin, taking with them young Marco Polo, a handsome gallant, who at once found favor with old Kublai Khan. Marco “sped wondrously in learning the customs of the Tartars, as well as their language, their manner of writing, and their practise of war ... insomuch that the emperor held him in great esteem. And so when he discerned Mark to have so much sense, and to conduct himself so well and beseemingly, he sent him on an embassage of his, to a country which was a good six months’ journey distant. The young gallant executed his commission well and with discretion.” The fact is that Kublai’s ambassadors, returning from different parts of the world, “were able to tell him nothing except the business on which they had gone, and that the prince in consequence held them for no better than dolts and fools.” Mark brought back plenty of gossip, and was a great success, for seventeen years being employed by the emperor on all sorts of missions. “And thus it came about that Messer Marco Polo had knowledge of or had actually visited a greater number of the different countries of the world than any other man.” In the Chinese annals of the Mongol dynasty there is record in 1277 of one Polo nominated a second-class commissioner or agent attached to the privy council. Marco had become a civil servant, and his father and uncle were both rich men, but as the years went on, and the aged emperor began to fail, they feared as to their fate after his death. Yet when they wanted to go home old Kublai growled at them.