The valley was long left behind, and the way grew more and more faintly traced, until it terminated in a wood, through whose tangled boughs the sunlight broke playfully.  At length, the wood opened into a wide glade, from which rose a precipitous ascent, crowned with the ruins of an old castle.  The traveller dismounted, led his horse up the ascent, and, gaining the ruins, left his steed within one of the roofless chambers, overgrown with the longest grass and a profusion of wild shrubs; thence ascending, with some toil, a narrow and broken staircase, he found himself in a small room, less decayed than the rest, of which the roof and floor were yet whole.

Stretched on the ground in his cloak, and leaning his head thoughtfully on his hand, was a man of tall stature, and middle age.  He lifted himself on his arm with great alacrity as the Cavalier entered.

“Well, Brettone, I have counted the hours—­what tidings?”

“Albornoz consents.”

“Glad news!  Thou givest me new life.  Pardieu, I shall breakfast all the better for this, my brother.  Hast thou remembered that I am famishing?”

Brettone drew from beneath his cloak a sufficiently huge flask of wine, and a small panier, tolerably well filled; the inmate of the tower threw himself upon the provant with great devotion.  And both the soldiers, for such they were, stretched at length on the ground, regaled themselves with considerable zest, talking hastily and familiarly between every mouthful.

“I say, Brettone, thou playest unfairly; thou hast already devoured more than half the pasty:  push it hitherward.  And so the Cardinal consents!  What manner of man is he?  Able as they say?”

“Quick, sharp, and earnest, with an eye of fire, few words, and comes to the point.”

“Unlike a priest then;—­a good brigand spoilt.  What hast thou heard of the force he heads?  Ho, not so fast with the wine.”

“Scanty at present.—­He relies on recruits throughout Italy.”

“What his designs for Rome?  There, my brother, there tends my secret soul!  As for these petty towns and petty tyrants, I care not how they fall, or by whom.  But the Pope must not return to Rome.  Rome must be mine.  The city of a new empire, the conquest of a new Attila!  There, every circumstance combines in my favour!—­the absence of the Pope, the weakness of the middle class, the poverty of the populace, the imbecile though ferocious barbarism of the Barons, have long concurred to render Rome the most facile, while the most glorious conquest!”

“My brother, pray Heaven your ambition do not wreck you at last; you are ever losing sight of the land.  Surely with the immense wealth we are acquiring, we may—­”