They won't be allowed to set things
topsy-turvy as they did at the Forum, where everybody's at sea since they
came along with their wonderful science!"

Pierre--a Frenchman--smiled, and his interest increased when, by broken
steps and wooden bridges thrown over gaps, he followed the guide into the
great ruins of the palace of Severus. Rising on the southern point of the
Palatine, this palace had overlooked the Appian Way and the Campagna as
far as the eye could reach. Nowadays, almost the only remains are the
substructures, the subterranean halls contrived under the arches of the
terraces, by which the plateau of the hill was enlarged; and yet these
dismantled substructures suffice to give some idea of the triumphant
palace which they once upheld, so huge and powerful have they remained in
their indestructible massiveness. Near by arose the famous Septizonium,
the tower with the seven tiers of arcades, which only finally disappeared
in the sixteenth century. One of the palace terraces yet juts out upon
cyclopean arches and from it the view is splendid. But all the rest is a
commingling of massive yet crumbling walls, gaping depths whose ceilings
have fallen, endless corridors and vast halls of doubtful destination.
Well cared for by the new administration, swept and cleansed of weeds,
the ruins have lost their romantic wildness and assumed an aspect of bare
and mournful grandeur. However, flashes of living sunlight often gild the
ancient walls, penetrate by their breaches into the black halls, and
animate with their dazzlement the mute melancholy of all this dead
splendour now exhumed from the earth in which it slumbered for centuries.
Over the old ruddy masonry, stripped of its pompous marble covering, is
the purple mantle of the sunlight, draping the whole with imperial glory
once more.

For more than two hours already Pierre had been walking on, and yet he
still had to visit all the earlier palaces on the north and east of the
plateau. "We must go back," said the guide, "the gardens of the Villa
Mills and the convent of San Bonaventura stop the way. We shall only be
able to pass on this side when the excavations have made a clearance. Ah!
Monsieur l'Abbe, if you had walked over the Palatine merely some fifty
years ago! I've seen some plans of that time. There were only some
vineyards and little gardens with hedges then, a real campagna, where not
a soul was to be met. And to think that all these palaces were sleepin