“Assuredly. You remember the horse races in the Piazza di San Pietro? I sat with Rocca near His Holiness at the Vatican windows. We talked of you and your northern ancestry. Rocca vowed you had become wholly Italian, a true virtuoso and humanist. I rejoined I knew you better. You would fight a score of duels, but never hire a bravo. He doubted. We laid a wager. My father’s plans fell in well with the test. He has long held you must enter the Church, in justice both to yourself and your friends. Bari of course has been a marked man for months. To-day the bait was proffered you. _Ecco!_ I have won.” With any save Marianna, I would have been exceeding angry, but with her hand upon my wrist, her breath almost upon my face, I think she could have said, “I will feed you to the Hydra,” and I would have cheerfully assented. After I had finished laughing at her pleasantly, I asked why she seemed so anxious to have me enter the Church. “Because, Gualtiero _mio_, look on the world,--I mean, of course, Italy. What secular prince is of consequence? Did not Caesare Borgia have as fair a chance to found a great power as can be given any man--ability, an iron will, a ready hand, a Pope for father, and marvellous good luck? But he is dead, an exile in Spain. Are not we Italians caught betwixt the French and Spanish millstones? If we keep our duchies and counties is it not by foreign sufferance? Does not His Holiness chafe daily at the insolent dictation of the foreign ambassadors? But art, learning, the love of the beautiful, the tongue of Cicero, and the tongue of Dante still are ours. And the Church is ours--the revenues drawn from frozen Norway and foggy England, from all Christendom,--still they come to Rome! And Rome having riches, wit, beauty, learning, has still her Empire. Therefore I would have you enter the Church. For I am ambitious for you, _caro mio_, very ambitious,”--and again she kissed me. “The good sisters who taught you at the convent of San Silvesto may well be proud of their pupil,” I rejoined gratefully. “Greece boasted Sappho as the peeress of Homer in poetry. May not Italy then praise Marianna di Forli as rival to the ancient Cicero and the modern Piccolomini in the fair art of eloquence?” Madonna shook her glorious head. “Praise me, after you obey me. If you enter the Church, what a fair future! You are rich, the Pope proverbially poor. How you can win his favor! The red hat in a very few years, and then”--with a little laugh--“will not the Conclave prefer a gay young Pope to an old surly one? And who handsomer, wittier, more learned, better bred?--” She did not finish, but flashed at me with her black eyes till my head fairly buzzed with fine notions. And yet her suggestion amused me mightily, and I replied:-- “I am glad you did not add, ‘and who more devout in life and conversation.’”