if offering complicity, came in tears one evening, when
night had fallen, to thank Donna Serafina for her exceeding goodness.

Pierre was with Dario that evening when Benedetta entered the room,
laughing and joyfully clapping her bands. "It's done, it's done!" she
said, "he has just left aunt, and vowed eternal gratitude to her. He will
now be obliged to show himself amiable."

However Dario distrustfully inquired: "But was he made to sign anything,
did he enter into a formal engagement?"

"Oh! no; how could one do that? It's such a delicate matter," replied
Benedetta. "But people say that he is a very honest man." Nevertheless,
in spite of these words, she herself became uneasy. What if Monsignor
Palma should remain incorruptible in spite of the great service which had
been rendered him? Thenceforth this idea haunted them, and their suspense
began once more.

Dario, eager to divert his mind, was imprudent enough to get up before he
was perfectly cured, and, his wound reopening, he was obliged to take to
his bed again for a few days. Every evening, as previously, Pierre strove
to enliven him with an account of his strolls. The young priest was now
getting bolder, rambling in turn through all the districts of Rome, and
discovering the many "classical" curiosities catalogued in the
guide-books. One evening he spoke with a kind of affection of the
principal squares of the city which he had first thought commonplace, but
which now seemed to him very varied, each with original features of its
own. There was the noble Piazza del Popolo of such monumental symmetry
and so full of sunlight; there was the Piazza di Spagna, the lively
meeting-place of foreigners, with its double flight of a hundred and
thirty steps gilded by the sun; there was the vast Piazza Colonna, always
swarming with people, and the most Italian of all the Roman squares from
the presence of the idle, careless crowd which ever lounged round the
column of Marcus Aurelius as if waiting for fortune to fall from heaven;
there was also the long and regular Piazza Navona, deserted since the
market was no longer held there, and retaining a melancholy recollection
of its former bustling life; and there was the Campo dei Fiori, which was
invaded each morning by the tumultuous fruit and vegetable markets, quite
a plantation of huge umbrellas sheltering heaps of tomatoes, pimentoes,
and grapes amidst a noisy stream of dealers and housewives. Pierre's
great surprise,