Your Eminence is aware that I am in Rome for the purpose of defending a book of mine, and I should be grateful if your Eminence would help and guide me." Then he gave a brief account of the present position of the affair, and began to plead his cause; but as he continued speaking he noticed that the Cardinal gave him very little attention, as though indeed he were thinking of something else, and failed to understand.
"Ah! yes," the great man at last muttered, "you have written a book.
There was some question of it at Donna Serafina's one evening.

But a priest ought not to write; it is a mistake for him to do so.

What is the good of it?
And the Congregation of the Index must certainly be in the right if it is prosecuting your book.

At all events, what can I do?
I don't belong to the Congregation, and I know nothing, nothing about the matter." Pierre, pained at finding him so listless and indifferent, went on trying to enlighten and move him.

But he realised that this man's mind, so far-reaching and penetrating in the field in which it had worked for forty years, closed up as soon as one sought to divert it from its specialty.