greeted the
traveller, ushered him into the presence of the living! He may well have
wondered among what sovereign people, what masters of the world, he was
about to find himself--a nation which had committed to its dead the duty
of telling strangers that it allowed nothing whatever to perish--that its
dead, like its city, remained eternal and glorious in monuments of
extraordinary vastness! To think of it--the foundations of a fortress,
and a tower sixty feet in diameter, that one woman might be laid to rest!
And then, far away, at the end of the superb, dazzling highway, bordered
with the marble of its funereal palaces, Pierre, turning round,
distinctly beheld the Palatine, with the marble of its imperial
palaces--the huge assemblage of palaces whose omnipotence had dominated
the world!

But suddenly he started: two carabiniers had just appeared among the
ruins. The spot was not safe; the authorities watched over tourists even
in broad daylight. And later on came another meeting which caused him
some emotion. He perceived an ecclesiastic, a tall old man, in a black
cassock, edged and girt with red; and was surprised to recognise Cardinal
Boccanera, who had quitted the roadway, and was slowly strolling along
the band of grass, among the tall thistles and sulphur-wort. With his
head lowered and his feet brushing against the fragments of the tombs,
the Cardinal did not even see Pierre. The young priest courteously turned
aside, surprised to find him so far from home and alone. Then, on
perceiving a heavy coach, drawn by two black horses, behind a building,
he understood matters. A footman in black livery was waiting motionless
beside the carriage, and the coachman had not quitted his box. And Pierre
remembered that the Cardinals were not expected to walk in Rome, so that
they were compelled to drive into the country when they desired to take
exercise. But what haughty sadness, what solitary and, so to say,
ostracised grandeur there was about that tall, thoughtful old man, thus
forced to seek the desert, and wander among the tombs, in order to
breathe a little of the evening air!

Pierre had lingered there for long hours; the twilight was coming on, and
once again he witnessed a lovely sunset. On his left the Campagna became
blurred, and assumed a slaty hue, against which the yellowish arcades of
the aqueduct showed very plainly, while the Alban hills, far away, faded
into pink. Then, on the right, towards the sea, the p