The room was a gracefully decorated, airy apartment, as became a hunting lodge. Perfumed air from the gardens blew in at the large open windows. The frescoes on the wall were by Giulio Romano,--nymphs and sea-gods on azure waves, the postures a little free, but not really scandalous. A polite buzz was proceeding from a little group of monsignori and secular noblemen who were standing around, all in suitable hunting costume. Two or three handsome pages were moving to and fro around a small, linen-covered table. In a high armchair, his plate before him, eating heartily, sat Leo de’ Medici. The years had added to his corpulency and the heaviness of his features. He wore a gray Flemish jacket and high leather huntsmen’s boots; a Spanish sombrero and a boar spear lay on the taboret beside him. As he looked up, I fell on both knees dutifully, and the usher’s announcement sounded. “His Excellency the Conte di Palaestro.” I was considering whether to approach and kiss the Pope’s hunting boots, when His Holiness himself thrust back the armchair in rising. A broad smile overspread his face. “Welcome, Gualtiero!” I heard his deep voice saying, and he did me the singular honor of extending his ring to be kissed, instead of advancing a foot. As I rose from my salute, he seized my hands warmly, and looked about the room with all the rapture of a lad greeting a long lost boon companion. “So long! So very long! And at last you are back. How I have missed you. How often I have execrated Forli and Rocca for involving you in that affair. I had thought of summoning you back to Rome earlier, but I knew that you would come of yourself. I was very sure of it. What a fortunate day! A great stag this morning, and now Gualtiero di Palaestro to join in the hunt this afternoon. Surely I say a lucky day!” “If I may wax poetical,” I replied, in my best Latin, releasing my hands and with another deep reverence, “the honor and fair fortune is entirely my own. Do I not see again Sol, the illuminer of the Earth, the terrestrial Apollo who sheds clear beams on mortal souls groping in their darkness, or if my metaphor be not too forced, do I not now reverence ‘Leo,’ who is no less the king of the kings of the world, than the four-footed ‘Leo’ is the king of beasts? I cry your Holiness’s judgment upon my figures of speech.”