We left Rome at last, in the middle of winter, in an open carriage, and traveling chiefly by night, as was my father's habit. While the horses are trotting on, I will sum up the impressions of Rome and the Roman world which I was carrying away. The clearest idea present to my mind was that the priests of Rome and their religion had very little in common with my father and Don Andreis, or with the religion professed by them and by the priests and the devout laity of Turin. I had not been able to detect the slightest trace of that which in the language of asceticism is called unction. I know not why, but that grave and downcast aspect, enlivened only by a few occasional flashes of ponderous clerical wit, the atmosphere depressing as the _plumbeus auster_ of Horace, in which I had been brought up under the rule of my priest,--all seemed unknown at Rome. There I never met with a monsignore or a priest who did not step out with a pert and jaunty air, his head erect, showing off a well-made leg, and daintily attired in the garb of a clerical dandy. Their conversation turned upon every possible subject, and sometimes upon _quibusdam aliis_, to such a degree that it was evident my father was perpetually on thorns. I remember a certain prelate, whom I will not name, and whose conduct was, I believe, sufficiently free and easy, who at a dinner-party at a villa near Porta Pia related laughingly some matrimonial anecdotes, which I at that time did not fully understand. And I remember also my poor father's manifest distress, and his strenuous endeavors to change the conversation and direct it into a different channel. The prelates and priests whom I used to meet in less orthodox companies than those frequented by my father seemed to me still more free and easy. Either in the present or in the past, in theory or in practice, with more or less or even no concealment, they all alike were sailing or had sailed on the sweet _fleuve du tendre_. For instance, I met one old canon bound to a venerable dame by a tie of many years' standing. I also met a young prelate with a pink-and-white complexion and eyes expressive of anything but holiness; he was a desperate votary of the fair sex, and swaggered about paying his homage right and left. Will it be believed, this gay apostle actually told me, without circumlocution, that in the monastery of Tor di Specchi there dwelt a young lady who was in love with me? I, who of course desired no better, took the hint instantly, and had her pointed out to me. Then began an interchange of silly messages, of languishing looks, and a hundred absurdities of the same kind; all cut short by the pair of post-horses which carried us out of the Porta del Popolo....