“A very brief and scurvy story.” The Cardinale di Forli stretched out his red-slippered feet, and reached languidly for the carafe of Chianti upon the table at his elbow. He had already emptied the cup several times and his thick lips were a little flushed. “It was six years ago--1511, to be exact, I remember; just before my lucky elevation. Well, I was then lodging at our convent near Santa Maria in Ara Cœli. I was the prior and manager, and very good dinners we had. What must needs happen but that stupid northern brute of a friar should visit Rome, and demand hospitality at our convent. Ugh! but what an unkempt rogue! He had come from Wittenberg, some den or town up in your frozen north, on business for his order before the papal chancery. We tried to show him kindness, and it was as good as a mummer’s play to see the way the fellow ran around to visit all the holy spots in the city. I doubt if there was a smoky shrine at which he didn’t burn a candle, or a dirty saint’s relic he didn’t want to see. He was amazingly anxious to go everywhere possible to heap up indulgence for the souls of his parents, and one day I told him about the Scala Santa. ‘Just mount the Holy Stairs on your knees,’ I advised, ‘say a prayer on each of the twenty-eight, and though your father were a bandit and your mother a witch, the devil will never get a glimpse of them in the hereafter.’ So off he went like one possessed, but came back much sooner than I thought. ‘Did you mount and pray on the stairs?’ I asked. ‘Reverend prior,’ answered he with a bad genuflection, and worse Latin, ‘as I knelt on the middlemost stair it seemed as though a voice spoke to me from heaven, “The just shall live by faith!” I arose and descended without kneeling on the rest.’ ‘The just shall live by faith!’ That from a bristly boar! Oh! his lousy impudence! He was so utterly comical I had to laugh in his face.” “The incident is vastly entertaining,” interposed the other member of our conference, his Eminence of Rocca, “but the Cardinale di Forli will allow me to remind him that I have a dinner appointment with a lady by the Ponte Molle, and that we have much to discuss.” “Ah, yes,” returned Forli, good-humoredly, tossing down his cupful, “so business before pleasure--” And he reached for a pile of papers upon the table.... A handsome, well-groomed man was Forli, barely gray, and becoming somewhat stout from abundant good living, though his red robes and red biretta could make him look half saintly when he rolled in his open carriage down the Corso. His companion, the Cardinale di Rocca, a leaner, younger personage, was in civilian costume, the latest achievement of his Venetian tailor, and even now he was glancing down with satisfaction upon his party-colored red and green hose, delicately embroidered with falcons and herons in gold thread, his black velvet doublet with its slashed sleeves, and the large jewelled buckles upon his morocco shoes.