columns of Phrygian and
Numidian marble and its eight niches containing colossal statues; there
were the hall of justice, the vast dining-room, the peristylium, the
sleeping apartments, where granite, porphyry, and alabaster overflowed,
carved and decorated by the most famous artists, and lavished on all
sides in order to dazzle the world. And finally, many years later, a last
palace was added to all the others--that of Septimius Severus: again a
building of pride, with arches supporting lofty halls, terraced storeys,
towers o'er-topping the roofs, a perfect Babylonian pile, rising up at
the extreme point of the mount in view of the Appian Way, so that the
emperor's compatriots--those from the province of Africa, where he was
born--might, on reaching the horizon, marvel at his fortune and worship
him in his glory.

And now Pierre beheld all those palaces which he had conjured up around
him, resuscitated, resplendent in the full sunlight. They were as if
linked together, parted merely by the narrowest of passages. In order
that not an inch of that precious summit might be lost, they had sprouted
thickly like the monstrous florescence of strength, power, and unbridled
pride which satisfied itself at the cost of millions, bleeding the whole
world for the enjoyment of one man. And in truth there was but one palace
altogether, a palace enlarged as soon as one emperor died and was placed
among the deities, and another, shunning the consecrated pile where
possibly the shadow of death frightened him, experienced an imperious
need to build a house of his own and perpetuate in everlasting stone the
memory of his reign. All the emperors were seized with this building
craze; it was like a disease which the very throne seemed to carry from
one occupant to another with growing intensity, a consuming desire to
excel all predecessors by thicker and higher walls, by a more and more
wonderful profusion of marbles, columns, and statues. And among all these
princes there was the idea of a glorious survival, of leaving a testimony
of their greatness to dazzled and stupefied generations, of perpetuating
themselves by marvels which would not perish but for ever weigh heavily
upon the earth, when their own light ashes should long since have been
swept away by the winds. And thus the Palatine became but the venerable
base of a monstrous edifice, a thick vegetation of adjoining buildings,
each new pile being like a fresh eruption of feverish prid