"Now that you are in Rome, I shall have the pleasure of seeing you again; come whenever you like, and on Thursday mornings especially, you will find me more at liberty; go to my _cameriere_, and he will introduce you at once, without taking you the round of the ante-chambers." The General was quite pleased with this reception, and said to me confidentially,-- "The pope wished me to call you to Rome, and from what he has told me, it appears that he has much good-will towards you; indeed, he certainly has a great partiality for you." Soon after he said,-- "The pope speaks of you with much interest, and has great hopes of you. I therefore feel more and more delighted that I have brought you to Rome, and I hope you also will be well pleased at my having done so. I have been wishing for the last two years to have you at the Minerva; recollect when you came here, at the beginning of 1831, to graduate,[35] how I then said to you that I required you in Rome, and I offered you some employments; but you declined my proposals, and preferred returning to Viterbo. You know that whoever seeks for preferment, must reside principally in Rome; and your spirit, your talents, and the many friends you have among the most illustrious personages, as well as the interest the pope takes in your welfare, guarantee to you the highest honours and dignities in the Church." "_Padre Generale_", I replied, "if this ambition to attain to high rank and dignity existed in my mind, I should then feel the necessity of remaining in Rome; but if I desire to attend to the service of my ministry, then it appears to me that I can be useful anywhere. Besides, as most talented men crowd into Rome, it is well, I think, that some like myself, assuming for argument's sake that I possess the qualifications you are pleased to attribute to me, should be dispersed here and there, in different parts of the country. I assure you, _Padre Generale_, that if I had not been compelled by you, I should not have left Viterbo, where I believe I was very useful; at any rate, I should have preferred going elsewhere, instead of coming to Rome. I do not know why this climate feels so heavy to me, and why it depresses my spirits, but so it is. I will, moreover, tell you frankly that the monastery of the Minerva has for me something repulsive; and from the time I left it in 1826, I never had any desire to return." "Then you do not like Rome?" "On the contrary, _Padre Generale_, I like Rome very much; you know that I am a Roman, although born in Viterbo, and God knows how I love this unhappy city! But it is precisely because I love it, that I cannot live in it: something that I cannot describe makes me suffer while I remain in Rome, but I feel it less when I am anywhere else." "I do not understand what you mean."