"Or worse, you only know when it's too late. - Do you mind if I sit?" he asks, but he certainly doesn't wait for an answer. Gren may be polite and softspoken - all of their encounters thus far were like that, but if the bits of biography they've exchanged are true, then no doubt Gren could and would make his point, should he prefer Cesare to move on.

"When it's too late to undo the damage and unsay the words." He swallows against the lump in his throat and shakes his head. "What you said was a bit like poetry. About the smoke, I mean. Ephemeral. - I used to joke about my sister's husbands that you never knew what was inside a man unless you cut him open, but... hell, I wouldn't have liked being a woman, back then."

Gren's still far away somewhere, maybe one of those outlandish and strange, no, those galactical places he's told him about, and Cesare keeps quiet for a moment, watching the ash at the tip of Gren's cigarette, growing, growing, falling.

"Have I been up to anything?" he repeats softly, rousing himself. "Hm. Not really. Long walks. Too much wine, possibly. Actually I'm dying to find a copy of the Times, or maybe look online, because the Vatican has released some rather arcane papers today. Nothing that concerns me, personally. But it always amuses me... the stuff they find on their back shelves."