ecture. It is undeniably, and almost
undeniedly, the best building in Rome today, though that may not be
saying much in a city which has been more exclusively the prey of the
Barocco than any other.

[Illustration: THE CANCELLERIA

From a print of the last century]

The Palace of the Massimo, once built to follow the curve of a narrow
winding street, but now facing the same great thoroughfare as the
Cancelleria, has something of the same quality, with a wholly different
character. It is smaller and more gloomy, and its columns are almost
black with age; it was here, in 1455, that Pannartz and Schweinheim, two
of those nomadic German scholars who have not yet forgotten the road to
Italy, established their printing-press in the house of Pietro de'
Massimi, and here took place one of those many romantic tragedies which
darkened the end of the sixteenth century. For a certain Signore
Massimo, in the year 1585, had been married and had eight sons, mostly
grown men, when he fell in love with a light-hearted lady of more wit
than virtue, and announced that he would make her his wife, though his
sons warned him that they would not bear the slight upon their mother's
memory. The old man, infatuated and beside himself with love, would not
listen to them, but published the banns, married the woman, and brought
her home for his wife.

One of the sons, the youngest, was too timid to join the rest; but on
the next morning the seven others went to the bridal apartment, and
killed their step-mother when their father was away. But he came back
before she was quite dead, and he took the Crucifix from the wall by the
bed and cursed his children. And the curse was fulfilled upon them.

Parione is the heart of Mediaeval Rome, the very centre of that black
cloud of mystery which hangs over the city of the Middle Age. A history
might be composed out of Pasquin's sayings, volumes have been written
about Cardinal Pompeo Colonna and the ruin he wrought, whole books have
been filled with the life and teachings and miracles of Saint Philip
Neri, who belonged to this quarter, erected here his great oratory, and
is believed to have recalled from the dead a youth of the house of
Massimo in that same gloomy palace.

The story of Rome is a tale of murder and sudden death, varied,
changing, never repeated in the same way; there is blood on every
threshold; a tragedy lies buried in every church and chapel; and again
we ask in vain wherein lies the