His return was no sooner made known in the city than numerous friends and relations and the greater number of the nobility crowded to his house, to bid him welcome and congratulate him upon the successful termination of his travels. His presentation to the pope took place a few days afterward, when Urban VIII. was so charmed with his conversation and manners, that, without application or intrigue on the part of the traveller, he was appointed his holiness’s honorary chamberlain,—a compliment regarded at Rome as highly flattering. In order to induce the pope to send out missionaries to Georgia, Pietro now presented him with a short account of that country, which he had formerly written; and the affair being seriously taken into consideration, it was determined by the society _De Propaganda Fide_ that the proposed measure should be carried into effect, and that Pietro should be regularly consulted respecting the business of the Levant missions in general. Early in the spring of 1627, he caused the funeral obsequies of his wife to be celebrated with extraordinary magnificence in the church of Aracœli at Rome. The funeral oration he himself pronounced; and when, after describing the various circumstances of her life, and the happiness of their union, he came to expatiate upon her beauty, his emotions became so violent that tears and sobs choked his utterance, and he failed to proceed. His auditors, according to some accounts, were likewise affected even unto tears; while others relate that they burst into a fit of laughter. If they did, the fault was in their own hearts; for, however extravagant the manner of Della Valle may have been, death is a solemn thing, and can never fail properly to affect all well-constituted minds. However, though his love for Maani’s memory seems never to have abated, the vanity of keeping up the illustrious name of Della Valle, and the consequent wish of leaving a legitimate offspring behind him, reconciled a second marriage to his mind, and Marian Tinatin, the Georgian girl whom he had brought with him from the East, appears to have been the person selected for his second wife. M. Eyriès asserts, but I know not upon what authority, that it was a relation of Maani whom he married; but this seems to be extremely improbable, since, so far as can be discovered from his travels, no relation of hers ever accompanied him, excepting the brother and sister who spent some time with him in Persia.