multitudinous jumble of little houses. He found a charm, too, in the
district of the Esquiline, where, besides innumerable flights of
ascending steps, each of grey pebbles edged with white stone, there were
sudden sinuous slopes, tiers of terraces, seminaries and convents,
lifeless, with their windows ever closed, and lofty, blank walls above
which a superb palm-tree would now and again soar into the spotless blue
of the sky. And on yet another evening, having strolled into the Campagna
beside the Tiber and above the Ponte Molle, he came back full of
enthusiasm for a form of classical art which hitherto he had scarcely
appreciated. Along the river bank, however, he had found the very scenery
that Poussin so faithfully depicted: the sluggish, yellow stream fringed
with reeds; low riven cliffs, whose chalky whiteness showed against the
ruddy background of a far-stretching, undulating plain, bounded by blue
hills; a few spare trees with a ruined porticus opening on to space atop
of the bank, and a line of pale-hued sheep descending to drink, whilst
the shepherd, with an elbow resting on the trunk of an ilex-tree, stood
looking on. It was a special kind of beauty, broad and ruddy, made up of
nothing, sometimes simplified into a series of low, horizontal lines, but
ever ennobled by the great memories it evoked: the Roman legions marching
along the paved highways across the bare Campagna; the long slumber of
the middle ages; and then the awakening of antique nature in the midst of
Catholicism, whereby, for the second time, Rome became ruler of the
world.

One day when Pierre came back from seeing the great modern cemetery, the
Campo Verano, he found Celia, as well as Benedetta, by the side of
Dario's bed. "What, Monsieur l'Abbe!" exclaimed the little Princess when
she learnt where he had been; "it amuses you to visit the dead?"

"Oh those Frenchmen," remarked Dario, to whom the mere idea of a cemetery
was repulsive; "those Frenchmen seem to take a pleasure in making their
lives wretched with their partiality for gloomy scenes."

"But there is no escaping the reality of death," gently replied Pierre;
"the best course is to look it in the face."

This made the Prince quite angry. "Reality, reality," said he, "when
reality isn't pleasant I don't look at it; I try never to think of it
even."

In spite of this rejoinder, Pierre, with his smiling, placid air, went on
enumerating the things which had struck him: first, the admir