as with a thousand touches of black ink. Then here
and there were the Pincio showing like a stagnant mere, the Villa Medici
uprearing its campanili, the castle of Sant' Angelo brown like rust, the
spire of Santa Maria Maggiore aglow like a burning taper, the three
churches of the Aventine drowsy amidst verdure, the Palazzo Farnese with
its summer-baked tiles showing like old gold, the domes of the Gesu, of
Sant' Andrea della Valle, of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, and yet other
domes and other domes, all in fusion, incandescent in the brazier of the
heavens. And Pierre again felt a heart-pang in presence of that harsh,
stern Rome, so different from the Rome of his dream, the Rome of
rejuvenescence and hope, which he had fancied he had found on his first
morning, but which had now faded away to give place to the immutable city
of pride and domination, stubborn under the sun even unto death.

And there on high, all alone with his thoughts, Pierre suddenly
understood. It was as if a dart of flaming light fell on him in that
free, unbounded expanse where he hovered. Had it come from the ceremony
which he had just beheld, from the frantic cry of servitude still ringing
in his ears? Had it come from the spectacle of that city beneath him,
that city which suggested an embalmed queen still reigning amidst the
dust of her tomb? He knew not; but doubtless both had acted as factors,
and at all events the light which fell upon his mind was complete: he
felt that Catholicism could not exist without the temporal power, that it
must fatally disappear whenever it should no longer be king over this
earth. A first reason of this lay in heredity, in the forces of history,
the long line of the heirs of the Caesars, the popes, the great pontiffs,
in whose veins the blood of Augustus, demanding the empire of the world,
had never ceased to flow. Though they might reside in the Vatican they
had come from the imperial abodes on the Palatine, from the palace of
Septimius Severus, and throughout the centuries their policy had ever
pursued the dream of Roman mastery, of all the nations vanquished,
submissive, and obedient to Rome. If its sovereignty were not universal,
extending alike over bodies and over souls, Catholicism would lose its
_raison d'etre_; for the Church cannot recognise any empire or kingdom
otherwise than politically--the emperors and the kings being purely and
simply so many temporary delegates placed in charge of the nations
pend