in marriage compact, bote I do not know eef she has a
fortune. Do you know any theengs?'

'Yes, a great many; one of which is that it is my dinner-time, and as I
turn down the Condotti--good afternoon.'

'Goo-ood by, my dear,' answered Attonito, as he slowly wandered up the
Piazza di Spagna.

Another example of the beneficial effects of the Pincio on the
_bourgeoise_, thought Rocjean. When will the alarm-bell in the clock of
Roman time ring out its awaking peal?

ROME BY NIGHT.

If one would realize the romantic side of Rome in all its stately
grandeur, and receive a solemn and ineffaceable impression of its
beauty, by all means let him, like Quevedo's hero, sleep 'a-daytime' and
do his sight-seeing by moonlight or star-light; for, save in some few
favored quarters, its inspection by gaslight would be difficult.
Remember, too, that all that is grandly beautiful of Rome, the traveler
has seen before he reaches the Imperial City--with the eyes of
understanding, with the eyes of others--in books.

Nothing but a heap of old stones, bricks, and mortar is there here for
the illiterate tourist--he can have six times as jolly a time in Paris
for half the money that he pays 'in that old hole where a fellow named
Culius Jaesar used to live.'

As if the night were not sufficiently dark in this city, there are
always those who stand ready with the paint-brush of fancy to make it
even of a darker hue; whisperings among the travelers in hotels of
certain Jim Joneses or Bill Smiths who have been robbed. Yes, sir, early
in the evening, right there in the Corso: grabbed his watch and chain,
struck him on the head. You know he was a powerfully built man; but they
came behind him, and if he hadn't have done so and so, the rascally
Italians would have killed him, and so forth.

'Re-al-ly; well, you won't catch me out at nights!'

There rises up, as I write, the figure of a slim young man, of the
day-time negro-minstrel style of beauty, who once dwelt three weeks in
Rome. I know that he was profound in knowledge of trick and vice, and
that he had an impediment in his speech--he could never speak the
truth. He told a fearful tale of a midnight robbery in the Piazza di
Spagna--himself the victim. It was well told, and I ought to know, for I
read it years before in a romance, only the scene was, in type, laid in
Venice. According to this negro-minstrel style of youth, he had been
seized from behind, held, robbed of watch and elega