imed: "Well, you are quite right, my dear Abbe, I myself can see a
pale figure at the window of the Holy Father's room."

Pierre, who scarcely took his eyes from the window, answered slowly:
"Yes, yes, it went away, but has just come back, and stands there white
and motionless."

"Well, after all, what would you have the Pope do?" resumed Narcisse with
his languid air. "He's like everybody else; he looks out of the window
when he wants a little distraction, and certainly there's plenty for him
to look at."

The same idea had occurred to Pierre, and was filling him with emotion.
People talked of the Vatican being closed, and pictured a dark, gloomy
palace, encompassed by high walls, whereas this palace overlooked all
Rome, and the Pope from his window could see the world. Pierre himself
had viewed the panorama from the summit of the Janiculum, the _loggie_ of
Raffaelle, and the dome of St. Peter's, and so he well knew what it was
that Leo XIII was able to behold. In the centre of the vast desert of the
Campagna, bounded by the Sabine and Alban mountains, the seven
illustrious hills appeared to him with their trees and edifices. His eyes
ranged also over all the basilicas, Santa Maria Maggiore, San Giovanni in
Laterano, the cradle of the papacy, San Paolo-fuori-le-Mura, Santa Croce
in Gerusalemme, Sant' Agnese, and the others; they beheld, too, the domes
of the Gesu of Sant' Andrea della Valle, San Carlo and San Giovanni dei
Fiorentini, and indeed all those four hundred churches of Rome which make
the city like a _campo santo_ studded with crosses. And Leo XIII could
moreover see the famous monuments testifying to the pride of successive
centuries--the Castle of Sant' Angelo, that imperial mausoleum which was
transformed into a papal fortress, the distant white line of the tombs of
the Appian Way, the scattered ruins of the baths of Caracalla and the
abode of Septimius Severus; and then, after the innumerable columns,
porticoes, and triumphal arches, there were the palaces and villas of the
sumptuous cardinals of the Renascence, the Palazzo Farnese, the Palazzo
Borghese, the Villa Medici, and others, amidst a swarming of facades and
roofs. But, in particular, just under his window, on the left, the Pope
was able to see the abominations of the unfinished district of the castle
fields. In the afternoon, when he strolled through his gardens, bastioned
by the wall of the fourth Leo like the plateau of a citadel, his view
st