?’ But I only cried the louder: ‘Let me tell you that I am going to spit into that coffee! Yes, and if you do not get me my passport visaed this very minute, I shall take it to Monsignor myself.’ ”

“What? While he is engaged with a Cardinal?” screeched the sacristan, again shrinking back in horror. Then, rushing to the door, he spread out his arms as though he would rather die than let me enter.

Thereupon I declared that I was a heretic and a barbarian⁠—“ Je suis hérétique et barbare ,” I said, “and that these archbishops and cardinals and monsignors, and the rest of them, meant nothing at all to me. In a word, I showed him that I was not going to give way. He looked at me with an air of infinite resentment. Then he snatched up my passport, and departed with it upstairs. A minute later the passport had been visaed! Here it is now, if you care to see it,”⁠—and I pulled out the document, and exhibited the Roman visa.