o, who was fifteen years her junior. And Pierre also knew who that man
was, a certain Jules Laporte, an ex-sergeant of the papal Swiss Guard, an
ex-traveller in relics, compromised in an extraordinary "false relic"
fraud; and he was further aware that Laporte's wife had made a
fine-looking Marquis Montefiori of him, the last of the fortunate
adventurers of romance, triumphing as in the legendary lands where
shepherds are wedded to queens.

At the next turn, as the large landau again went by, Pierre looked at the
couple. The Marchioness was really wonderful, blooming with all the
classical Roman beauty, tall, opulent, and very dark, with the head of a
goddess and regular if somewhat massive features, nothing as yet
betraying her age except the down upon her upper lip. And the Marquis,
the Romanised Swiss of Geneva, really had a proud bearing, with his solid
soldierly figure and long wavy moustaches. People said that he was in no
wise a fool but, on the contrary, very gay and very supple, just the man
to please women. His wife so gloried in him that she dragged him about
and displayed him everywhere, having begun life afresh with him as if she
were still but twenty, spending on him the little fortune which she had
saved from the Villa Montefiori disaster, and so completely forgetting
her son that she only saw the latter now and again at the promenade and
acknowledged his bow like that of some chance acquaintance.

"Let us go to see the sun set behind St. Peter's," all at once said
Dario, conscientiously playing his part as a showman of curiosities.

The victoria thereupon returned to the terrace, where a military band was
now playing with a terrific blare of brass instruments. In order that
their occupants might hear the music, a large number of carriages had
already drawn up, and a growing crowd of loungers on foot had assembled
there. And from that beautiful terrace, so broad and lofty, one of the
most wonderful views of Rome was offered to the gaze. Beyond the Tiber,
beyond the pale chaos of the new district of the castle meadows,* and
between the greenery of Monte Mario and the Janiculum arose St. Peter's.
Then on the left came all the olden city, an endless stretch of roofs, a
rolling sea of edifices as far as the eye could reach. But one's glances
always came back to St. Peter's, towering into the azure with pure and
sovereign grandeur. And, seen from the terrace, the slow sunsets in the
depths of the vast sky behi