For my part, I am bound to confess that even his Holiness sometimes annoys and wearies me by begging for too much of my company.

I am most anxious to serve him, but, when there is nothing important going forward, I think I can do so better by studying at home than by dancing attendance through a whole day on my legs in his reception-rooms.

He allows me to tell him so; and I may add that the serious occupations of my life have won for me such liberty of action that, in talking to the Pope, I often forget where I am, and place my hat upon my head.

He does not eat me up on that account, but treats me with indulgence, knowing that it is precisely at such times that I am working hard to serve him.

As for solitary habits, the world is right in condemning a man who, out of pure affectation or eccentricity, shuts himself up alone, loses his friends, and sets society against him.