before Bernini's "Santa Teresa." It
seemed that when he did not see that statue for a week he suffered as
acutely as if he were parted from some cherished mistress. And his
adoration varied with the time of day, according to the light in which he
beheld the figure: in the morning, when the pale glow of dawn steeped it
in whiteness, he worshipped it with quite a mystical transport of the
soul, whilst in the afternoon, when the glow of the declining sun's
oblique rays seemed to permeate the marble, his passion became as fiery
red as the blood of martyrs. "Ah! my friend," said he with a weary air
whilst his dreamy eyes faded to mauve, "you have no idea how delightful
and perturbing her awakening was this morning--how languorously she
opened her eyes, like a pure, candid virgin, emerging from the embrace of
the Divinity. One could die of rapture at the sight!"

Then, growing calm again when he had taken a few steps, he resumed in the
voice of a practical man who does not lose his balance in the affairs of
life: "We'll walk slowly towards the castle-fields district--the
buildings yonder; and on our way I'll tell you what I know of the things
we shall see there. It was the maddest affair imaginable, one of those
delirious frenzies of speculation which have a splendour of their own,
just like the superb, monstrous masterpiece of a man of genius whose mind
is unhinged. I was told of it all by some relatives of mine, who took
part in the gambling, and, in point of fact, made a good deal of money by
it."

Thereupon, with the clearness and precision of a financier, employing
technical terms with perfect ease, he recounted the extraordinary
adventure. That all Italy, on the morrow of the occupation of Rome,
should have been delirious with enthusiasm at the thought of at last
possessing the ancient and glorious city, the eternal capital to which
the empire of the world had been promised, was but natural. It was, so to
say, a legitimate explosion of the delight and the hopes of a young
nation anxious to show its power. The question was to make Rome a modern
capital worthy of a great kingdom, and before aught else there were
sanitary requirements to be dealt with: the city needed to be cleansed of
all the filth which disgraced it. One cannot nowadays imagine in what
abominable putrescence the city of the popes, the _Roma sporca_ which
artists regret, was then steeped: the vast majority of the houses lacked
even the most primitive ar