"Good-evening, Monsieur l'Abbe," he said; "you can go down by
way of Caligula's palace."

Delightful was Pierre's relief when he was at last able to rest for a
moment on one of the marble seats in the garden. There were but few
clumps of trees, cypresses, box-trees, palms, and some fine evergreen
oaks; but the latter, sheltering the seat, cast a dark shade of exquisite
freshness around. The charm of the spot was also largely due to its
dreamy solitude, to the low rustle which seemed to come from that ancient
soil saturated with resounding history. Here formerly had been the
pleasure grounds of the Villa Farnese which still exists though greatly
damaged, and the grace of the Renascence seems to linger here, its breath
passing caressingly through the shiny foliage of the old evergreen oaks.
You are, as it were, enveloped by the soul of the past, an ethereal
conglomeration of visions, and overhead is wafted the straying breath of
innumerable generations buried beneath the sod.

After a time, however, Pierre could no longer remain seated, so powerful
was the attraction of Rome, scattered all around that august summit. So
he rose and approached the balustrade of a terrace; and beneath him
appeared the Forum, and beyond it the Capitoline hill. To the eye the
latter now only presented a commingling of grey buildings, lacking both
grandeur and beauty. On the summit one saw the rear of the Palace of the
Senator, flat, with little windows, and surmounted by a high, square
campanile. The large, bare, rusty-looking walls hid the church of Santa
Maria in Ara Coeli and the spot where the temple of Capitoline Jove had
formerly stood, radiant in all its royalty. On the left, some ugly houses
rose terrace-wise upon the slope of Monte Caprino, where goats were
pastured in the middle ages; while the few fine trees in the grounds of
the Caffarelli palace, the present German embassy, set some greenery
above the ancient Tarpeian rock now scarcely to be found, lost, hidden as
it is, by buttress walls. Yet this was the Mount of the Capitol, the most
glorious of the seven hills, with its citadel and its temple, the temple
to which universal dominion was promised, the St. Peter's of pagan Rome;
this indeed was the hill--steep on the side of the Forum, and a precipice
on that of the Campus Martius--where the thunder of Jupiter fell, where
in the dimmest of the far-off ages the Asylum of Romulus rose with its
sacred oaks, a spot of infinite savage