men, they gave appropriate answers upon all these points, and as they were perfectly acquainted with the Tartar language, they expressed themselves always in becoming terms; insomuch that the Grand Khan, holding them in high estimation, frequently commanded their attendance.[16]

[Illustration:  III.  PART OF A LANDSCAPE BY CHAO MENG-FU]

The Great Khan finally decided to send these two intelligent strangers back to their own land on a mission from himself to the Pope, asking for a hundred men of learning to be sent to teach and preach to his Tartars, and for some holy oil from the lamp which burned over Christ’s sepulchre in Jerusalem.  He provided them with a golden tablet of honour, which acted as a passport and secured that they should be entertained and their journey facilitated from city to city in all his dominions, and so they set forth once more upon their homeward journey, But they were delayed by the dangers and difficulties of travel, ’the extreme cold, the snow, the ice, and the flooding of the rivers’, and it was three years before they at last reached Acre in the April of 1269, and finding that the Pope had died the year before, and that no election had yet been made, so that they could not immediately accomplish their mission, they decided to visit their home again, and so went back to Venice.  There Nicolo found that his wife, who had been with child at his departure, was dead, leaving behind her a son Marco, our young haunter of quays.

[Illustration:  IV.  MADAME EGLENTYNE AT HOME]

This was the marvellous tale which the same Marco drank in from the lips of his new-found father and uncle.  But more marvels were to come.  For two years the Venetians remained at home, awaiting the election of a Pope in order to deliver the Great Khan’s letters; but no election was made, and at last, fearing that Kublai might suspect them of playing him false, they decided to return to the East, and this time they took with them Marco, now a well-grown lad of sixteen or seventeen years with a bright eye that looked everywhere and took in everything, observant and sober beyond his age.  But when they got as far as Ayas on the Gulf of Scanderoon, news was brought them of the election of Tebaldo di Piacenza as Pope Gregory X, and as Tebaldo had already interested himself in their mission, they returned with all speed to Acre, and obtained from him letters to the Khan (they had already visited Jerusalem and provided themselves with some of the holy oil), and two Dominican friars, ’men of letters and science as well as profound theologians,’ though not the hundred men of learning for whom the Khan had asked; and so they set out again from Acre in November 1271.  The Dominicans may have been profound theologians, but they were somewhat chicken-hearted adventurers, and when rumours reached them of wars in the district of Armenia, through which they had to pass, they hastily handed over their letters to the Venetians, put themselves under the