red among the
ruins. The spot was not safe; the authorities watched over tourists even
in broad daylight. And later on came another meeting which caused him
some emotion. He perceived an ecclesiastic, a tall old man, in a black
cassock, edged and girt with red; and was surprised to recognise Cardinal
Boccanera, who had quitted the roadway, and was slowly strolling along
the band of grass, among the tall thistles and sulphur-wort. With his
head lowered and his feet brushing against the fragments of the tombs,
the Cardinal did not even see Pierre. The young priest courteously turned
aside, surprised to find him so far from home and alone. Then, on
perceiving a heavy coach, drawn by two black horses, behind a building,
he understood matters. A footman in black livery was waiting motionless
beside the carriage, and the coachman had not quitted his box. And Pierre
remembered that the Cardinals were not expected to walk in Rome, so that
they were compelled to drive into the country when they desired to take
exercise. But what haughty sadness, what solitary and, so to say,
ostracised grandeur there was about that tall, thoughtful old man, thus
forced to seek the desert, and wander among the tombs, in order to
breathe a little of the evening air!

Pierre had lingered there for long hours; the twilight was coming on, and
once again he witnessed a lovely sunset. On his left the Campagna became
blurred, and assumed a slaty hue, against which the yellowish arcades of
the aqueduct showed very plainly, while the Alban hills, far away, faded
into pink. Then, on the right, towards the sea, the planet sank among a
number of cloudlets, figuring an archipelago of gold in an ocean of dying
embers. And excepting the sapphire sky, studded with rubies, above the
endless line of the Campagna, which was likewise changed into a sparkling
lake, the dull green of the herbage turning to a liquid emerald tint,
there was nothing to be seen, neither a hillock nor a flock--nothing,
indeed, but Cardinal Boccanera's black figure, erect among the tombs, and
looking, as it were, enlarged as it stood out against the last purple
flush of the sunset.

Early on the following morning Pierre, eager to see everything, returned
to the Appian Way in order to visit the catacomb of St. Calixtus, the
most extensive and remarkable of the old Christian cemeteries, and one,
too, where several of the early popes were buried. You ascend through a
scorched garden, past oli