mp; but the effect of the town
lights, orange-yellow mingling with the white radiance pouring down from
the sky, was wonderful and mysterious on arched gateways, on dark
facades of tall buildings, on statues, on columns, on fountains. Coming
in out of the country stillness, the noise and rush of the big city
seemed appalling. Fierce electric trams dashed clanging and flashing in
all directions, making a pandemonium worse than Chicago or the streets
of Paris. Horses and carts darted across the glittering tracks under our
noses, bicyclists spun between our car and lumbering hotel omnibuses,
and hadn't an inch to spare. In the middle of one huge street was
something that looked like a Roman ruin, with every shadow sharp as a
point of jet in the confused blending of light. Brazen bells boomed,
mellow chimes fluted, church clocks mingled their voices, each trying to
tell the hour first; and to add to the bewildering effect of our entry,
drivers and people on foot waved their arms, yelling wildly something I
couldn't understand.

Mr. Barrymore understood, however, and only just in time to save an
accident, for it seemed that we were on the wrong side of the road.
Suddenly and arbitrarily it was the rule to keep on the left side
instead of the right, and the Chauffeulier shot across before a tram,
approaching at the speed of a train, could run us down.

"That's the worst of this part of Italy," I heard him shout over the din
to Maida. "Any town that chooses makes a different rule for itself and
its suburbs, and then expects strangers to know by instinct just where
and when it changes."

It was like being shot out of a catapult from the Inferno straight to
Paradise, as Sir Ralph said, when suddenly we saved ourselves from the
hurly-burly, flashing into a noble square with room for a thousand
street-cars and as many automobiles to browse together in peace and
harmony.

A mass of glimmering white towers and pinnacles, the Cathedral rose, a
miracle of beauty in the flood of moonlight that turned grey into white,
old marble into snow, and gave to each of the myriad carvings the
lace-like delicacy of frost-work.

"I wanted you to see the Duomo first by moonlight," said Mr. Barrymore,
after we had sat still, gazing up for some moments, with even the car
motionless and silent. "To-morrow morning you can come again for the
detail, and spend as much time as you like inside, for I hope it won't
take us many hours to run to Bellagio