ached her and learnt that she had been working in the house outside
which she was, a manufactory of wax beads, but that, slack times having
come, the workshops had closed and she did not dare to return home, so
fearful was the misery there. Amidst the downpour of her tears she raised
such beautiful eyes to his that he ended by drawing some money from his
pocket. But at this, crimson with confusion, she sprang to her feet,
hiding her hands in the folds of her skirt, and refusing to take
anything. She added, however, that he might follow her if it so pleased
him, and give the money to her mother. And then she hurried off towards
the Ponte St'. Angelo.*

* Bridge of St. Angelo.

"Yes, she was a beauty, a perfect beauty," repeated Dario with an air of
ecstasy. "Taller than I, and slim though sturdy, with the bosom of a
goddess. In fact, a real antique, a Venus of twenty, her chin rather
bold, her mouth and nose of perfect form, and her eyes wonderfully pure
and large! And she was bare-headed too, with nothing but a crown of heavy
black hair, and a dazzling face, gilded, so to say, by the sun."

They had all begun to listen to him, enraptured, full of that passionate
admiration for beauty which, in spite of every change, Rome still retains
in her heart.

"Those beautiful girls of the people are becoming very rare," remarked
Morano. "You might scour the Trastevere without finding any. However,
this proves that there is at least one of them left."

"And what was your goddess's name?" asked Benedetta, smiling, amused and
enraptured like the others.

"Pierina," replied Dario, also with a laugh.

"And what did you do with her?"

At this question the young man's excited face assumed an expression of
discomfort and fear, like the face of a child on suddenly encountering
some ugly creature amidst its play.

"Oh! don't talk of it," said he. "I felt very sorry afterwards. I saw
such misery--enough to make one ill."

Yielding to his curiosity, it seemed, he had followed the girl across the
Ponte St'. Angelo into the new district which was being built over the
former castle meadows*; and there, on the first floor of an abandoned
house which was already falling into ruins, though the plaster was
scarcely dry, he had come upon a frightful spectacle which still stirred
his heart: a whole family, father and mother, children, and an infirm old
uncle, dying of hunger and rotting in filth! He selected the most
dignified words he