Independently, indeed, of study altogether, the Propaganda was for years his favourite place of resort, and there was no place where his playful and ingenuous character was more pleasingly displayed. He mixed among the pupils as one of themselves, with all the ease of an equal, and without a shade of that laborious condescension which often makes the affability of superiors an actual penance to those whom they desire to render happy. While the cheerfulness of his conversation was often tempered by grave advice or tender exhortation, it was commonly lively and even playful, and frequently ran into an amusing exhibition which those who witnessed never could forget. In the free and familiar intercourse which he encouraged and maintained, there sometimes arose sportive trials of skill, in which the great amusement of his young friends consisted in endeavouring to puzzle him by a confusion of languages, and to provoke him into answering in a language different from that in which he was addressed. The idea of these trials (which reminded one of the old-fashioned game of “cross-question,”) appears to have originated in a good-humoured surprise, which the Pope Gregory XVI. played off on Mezzofanti soon after his arrival in Rome. The linguist, however, was equal to the emergency. Like the good knight, Sir Tristram, he proved “Most master of himself, and least encumbered, When over-matched, entangled, and outnumbered.” “One day,” says M. Manavit, “Gregory XVI. provided an agreeable surprise for the polyglot prelate, and a rare treat for himself, in an improvised conversation in various tongues—a regular linguistic tournament. Among the mazy alleys of the Vatican gardens, behind one of the massive walls of verdure which form its peculiar glory, the Pope placed a certain number of the Propaganda students in ambuscade. When the time came for his ordinary walk, he invited Mezzofanti to accompany him; and, as they were proceeding gravely and solemnly, on a sudden, at a given signal, these youths grouped themselves for a moment on their knees before his Holiness, and then, quickly rising, addressed themselves to Mezzofanti, each in his own tongue, with such an abundance of words and such a volubility of tone, that, in the jargon of dialects, it was almost impossible to hear, much less to understand them. But Mezzofanti did not shrink from the conflict. With the promptness and address which were peculiar to him, he took them up singly, and replied to each in his own language, with such spirit and elegance as to amaze them all.”