Nicolo, who, during the many years he had been absent, seems to have received no intelligence from home, now found that his wife, whom he had left pregnant at his departure, was dead, but that she had left him a son, named Marco, then nineteen years old. The pope, likewise, had died the preceding year; and various intrigues preventing the election of a successor, they remained in Italy two years, unable to execute the commission of the khan. At length, fearing that their long absence might be displeasing to Kublai, and perceiving no probability of a speedy termination to the intrigues of the conclave, they, in 1271, again set out for the East, accompanied by young Marco. Arriving in Palestine, they obtained from the legate Visconti, then at Acre, letters testifying their fidelity to the Great Khan, and stating the fact that a new pope had not yet been chosen. At Al-Ajassi, in Armenia, however, they were overtaken by a messenger from Visconti, who wrote to inform them that he himself had been elected to fill the papal throne, and requested that they would either return, or delay their departure until he could provide them with new letters to the khan. As soon as these letters and the presents of his holiness arrived, they continued their journey, and passing through the northern provinces of Persia, were amused with the extraordinary history of the Assassins, then recently destroyed by a general of Holagon. Quitting Persia, they proceeded through a rich and picturesque country to Balkh, a celebrated city, which they found in ruins and nearly deserted, its lofty walls and marble palaces having been levelled with the ground by the devastating armies of the Mongols. The country in the neighbourhood had likewise been depopulated, the inhabitants having taken refuge in the mountains from the rapacious cruelty of the predatory hordes, who roamed over the vast fields which greater robbers had reaped, gleaning the scanty plunder which had escaped their powerful predecessors. Though the land was well watered and fertile, and abounding in game, lions and other wild beasts had begun to establish their dominion over it, man having disappeared; and therefore, such travellers as ventured across this new wilderness were constrained to carry along with them all necessary provisions, nothing whatever being to be found on the way.