After the formal opening of the session, a Consistorial Advocate (in garments of a violet colour and furred with ermine about the neck) was commanded to read aloud, from the _Daily Anagraph_, the account of the Pope's visit in disguise to the house on Via Morino. He was to read it, first, in English, then, in Latin. It was not a long lection: for journalistic instinct had perceived that the facts stated would be more damnatory in their nakedness. With that inscrutable incomprehensible vivid gleam of hilarity irradiating His face, Hadrian checked the Consistorial Advocate from time to time, preventing him from drifting into the monotonous gabble, which is used for the formal reading of documents whose contents already are known informally; and, if His object was to cause each deadly detail of the charge against Himself to come out clearly, with all the contours definite and all the tints brilliantly varnished, it must be admitted that His method was pontifically successful. "Ebbene dunque?" muttered Cardinal Ragna. Hadrian darted a word at the Cardinal-Prefect-of-Propaganda: "Will Your Eminency have the goodness to describe, to the Sacred College, your acts of the afternoon and evening of the festival of St. Michael Archangel?" The naming of the festival of Michaelmas was like a touch on the latch of the Red Pope's memory. His pure and gentle face lighted up: for he perceived the connotation; and that inspired him with a joy so delectable that he paused to pick his words, tasting them deliberately, lingering over them. "After siesta on the festival of St. Michael Archangel,--and that would be about 15-1/2 hours of the clock, not later,--I came to Vatican and was received by Your Holiness. I was admitted to the secret chamber. I sat opposite to Your Holiness, by the window. I remember that, for a reason. I spoke to Your Holiness on the subject of removing England from the control of Propaganda. I said that I had pondered Your Holiness's proposition. I said that it appeared to me, as it already had appeared to Your Holiness, that the necessity for treating England as a barbarous uncivilized savage country, in which the Faith is preached by missionaries, no longer existed. I added my own opinion, that to continue to treat England as a savage uncivilized barbarous country, now, amounted to perennial insult. I received Your Holiness's thanks. I am giving only the heads of this conversation, which was prolonged until the seventeenth hour. Then, the pontifical pages brought in a tray containing fruit and triscuits and some English tea. I told Your Holiness that tea astringed my nerves, remarking on the difference between English nerves and Italian. I was permitted to make a few jokes. In the midst of these very diverting burlesques, I ate a little fruit--perhaps a fig and a half--and I drank a little wine of Cinthyanum. Afterwards, I proceeded to discuss another case with Your Holiness. That case was the removal, from the spiritual rule