Good. Come along.'

"The church has a flight of stone steps and two cypresses to one side.

"We went into a court with graves in it, and stayed there a while,
reading the names of the people buried in them. Susanna's friend is a
sort of little devil with the instincts of a small boy, and she went
springing about in all the corners.

"When we came out of the church we found the square, deserted before,
now full of people. During the time we had stayed inside, a numerous
group of tourists had formed a circle, and a gentleman was explaining in
English what the Via Appia used to be.

"'These are the things that please you,' Susanna said to me, laughing.

"I answered with a joke. The truth is that no matter how many
explanations I am given, an ancient Roman always seems a cardboard
figure to me, or at most a marble figure. It is not possible to imagine
how bored I used to be reading _Les Martyres_ of Chateaubriand and that
famous _Quo Vadis_.

"From the Piazza di San Gregorio we took a steep street, the 'Via di
Santi Giovanni e Paolo,' which passes under an arch with several brick
buttresses.

"We came out in a little square, in an angle of which there is an
ancient arcaded tower, which has tiles set into the walls, some round
and others the shape of a Greek cross.

"The modern portico of the church has columns and a grated door, which
we found open. Over the door is a picture of Saint John and Saint Paul;
on the sides of it two shields with the mitre and the keys. On one, set
round about, are the Latin words: _Omnium rerum est vicisitudo;_ on the
other is written in Spanish: _Mi corazon arde en mucha llama._

"'Is it Spanish?' Susanna asked me.

"'Yes.'

"'What does it mean?'

"I translated the phrase into English: 'My heart burns with a great
flame'; and Susanna repeated it several times, and begged me to write it
in her card-case.

"Her friend skimmed some pages in Baedeker and said:

"'It seems that the house of two saints martyred by Julian the Apostate
is preserved here.'

"I assured them that that was an error. I happen to have been reading
just a few days ago a book about Julian the Apostate, and it turns out
that that Emperor was an admirable man, good, generous, brave, full of
virtues; but the Christians had reason for calumniating him and they
calumniated him. All Julian's persecutions of Christians are logical
repressions of people that were disturbing public order, and the phrase,
Vencisti, G