the sight!"

Then, growing calm again when he had taken a few steps, he resumed in the
voice of a practical man who does not lose his balance in the affairs of
life: "We'll walk slowly towards the castle-fields district--the
buildings yonder; and on our way I'll tell you what I know of the things
we shall see there. It was the maddest affair imaginable, one of those
delirious frenzies of speculation which have a splendour of their own,
just like the superb, monstrous masterpiece of a man of genius whose mind
is unhinged. I was told of it all by some relatives of mine, who took
part in the gambling, and, in point of fact, made a good deal of money by
it."

Thereupon, with the clearness and precision of a financier, employing
technical terms with perfect ease, he recounted the extraordinary
adventure. That all Italy, on the morrow of the occupation of Rome,
should have been delirious with enthusiasm at the thought of at last
possessing the ancient and glorious city, the eternal capital to which
the empire of the world had been promised, was but natural. It was, so to
say, a legitimate explosion of the delight and the hopes of a young
nation anxious to show its power. The question was to make Rome a modern
capital worthy of a great kingdom, and before aught else there were
sanitary requirements to be dealt with: the city needed to be cleansed of
all the filth which disgraced it. One cannot nowadays imagine in what
abominable putrescence the city of the popes, the _Roma sporca_ which
artists regret, was then steeped: the vast majority of the houses lacked
even the most primitive arrangements, the public thoroughfares were used
for all purposes, noble ruins served as store-places for sewage, the
princely palaces were surrounded by filth, and the streets were perfect
manure beds which fostered frequent epidemics. Thus vast municipal works
were absolutely necessary, the question was one of health and life
itself. And in much the same way it was only right to think of building
houses for the newcomers, who would assuredly flock into the city. There
had been a precedent at Berlin, whose population, after the establishment
of the German empire, had suddenly increased by some hundreds of
thousands. In the same way the population of Rome would certainly be
doubled, tripled, quadrupled, for as the new centre of national life the
city would necessarily attract all the _vis viva_ of the provinces. And
at this thought pride stepped in