sharp-toned bells were beginning to ring.

They went up the stairway that leads to the Capitol, and on a little
terrace they stopped to look at the Forum.

"What terrible desolation!" exclaimed Susanna.

"All the stones look like tombs," said Caesar. "Yes, that is true."

"What are those three high open vaults that give so strange an
impression of immense size?" asked Caesar.

"That is what remains of Constantine's basilica."

For a long while they gazed at that abandoned space, with its melancholy
columns and white stones.

In a street running into the Forum, there began to shine two rows of
gaslights of a greenish colour.

As they passed down the slope leading to the Capitol, in a little street
to the left, the Via Monte Tarpea, they saw a funeral procession ready
to start. At that moment the corpse was being brought into the street.
Several women in black were waiting by the house door with lighted
candles.

The priest, in his white surplice and holding up his cross, gave the
order to start, and pushed to the front of the crowd; four men raised
the bier and took it on their shoulders, and the procession of women in
black, men, and children, followed behind. Bells with sharp voices began
again to sound in the air.

"Oh, isn't it sad!" said Susanna, lifting her hand to her breast.

They watched how the procession moved away, and then Caesar murmured,
ill-humouredly:

"It is stupid."

"What?" asked Susanna.

"I say that it's stupid to take pleasure in feeling miserable. What we
are doing is absurd and unhealthy."

Susanna burst into laughter, and when she said good-night to Caesar she
squeezed his hand energetically.

XXIII. THE 'SCUTCHEON OF A CHURCH

"Susanna Marchmont," Caesar wrote to his friend Alzugaray, "is a
beautiful woman, rich, and apparently intelligent. She has given me to
understand that she feels a certain inclination for me, and if I please
her well enough, she will get a divorce and marry me.

"I have discovered the reasons for her inclination, first in a desire to
revenge herself on her husband by marrying the brother of the woman he
has fallen in love with; secondly, in my not having made love to her,
like the majority of the men she has known.

"Really, Susanna is a beautiful woman; but whereas other women gain
by being looked at and listened to, with her it is not so. In this
beautiful woman there is something cold, utilitarian, which she does not
succeed in hiding