avage grandeur, till their palace should fall
about their heads. Pierre could only just detect a faint sound, the
gnawing of a mouse perhaps, unless it were caused by Abbe Paparelli
attacking the walls of some out-of-the-way rooms, preying on the old
edifice down below, so as to hasten its fall.

The cab stood at the door, already laden with the luggage, the box beside
the driver, the valise on the seat; and the priest at once got in.

"Oh! You have plenty of time," said Victorine, who had remained on the
foot-pavement. "Nothing has been forgotten. I'm glad to see you go off
comfortably."

And indeed at that last moment Pierre was comforted by the presence of
that worthy woman, his compatriot, who had greeted him on his arrival and
now attended his departure. "I won't say 'till we meet again,' Monsieur
l'Abbe," she exclaimed, "for I don't fancy that you'll soon be back in
this horrid city. Good-bye, Monsieur l'Abbe."

"Good-bye, Victorine, and thank you with all my heart."

The cab was already going off at a fast trot, turning into the narrow
sinuous street which leads to the Corso Vittoria Emanuele. It was not
raining and so the hood had not been raised, but although the damp
atmosphere was comparatively mild, Pierre at once felt a chill. However,
he was unwilling to stop the driver, a silent fellow whose only desire
seemingly was to get rid of his fare as soon as possible. When the cab
came out into the Corso Vittoria Emanuele, the young man was astonished
to find it already quite deserted, the houses shut, the footways bare,
and the electric lamps burning all alone in melancholy solitude. In
truth, however, the temperature was far from warm and the fog seemed to
be increasing, hiding the house-fronts more and more. When Pierre passed
the Cancelleria, that stern colossal pile seemed to him to be receding,
fading away; and farther on, upon the right, at the end of the Via di Ara
Coeli, starred by a few smoky gas lamps, the Capitol had quite vanished
in the gloom. Then the thoroughfare narrowed, and the cab went on between
the dark heavy masses of the Gesu and the Altieri palace; and there in
that contracted passage, where even on fine sunny days one found all the
dampness of old times, the quivering priest yielded to a fresh train of
thought. It was an idea which had sometimes made him feel anxious, the
idea that mankind, starting from over yonder in Asia, had always marched
onward with the sun. An east wind had al