the third Rome, the triumphant
capital of Italy, could not count less than a million souls, and in
regarding that proposition as indisputable fact. The people had not come,
but they surely would come: no patriot could doubt it without being
guilty of treason. And so houses were built and built without a pause,
for the half-million citizens who were coming. There was no anxiety as to
the date of their arrival; it was sufficient that they should be
expected. Inside Rome the companies which had been formed in connection
with the new thoroughfares passing through the old, demolished,
pestiferous districts, certainly sold or let their house property, and
thereby realised large profits. But, as the craze increased, other
companies were established for the purpose of erecting yet more and more
districts outside Rome--veritable little towns, of which there was no
need whatever. Beyond the Porta San Giovanni and the Porta San Lorenzo,
suburbs sprang up as by miracle. A town was sketched out over the vast
estate of the Villa Ludovisi, from the Porta Pia to the Porta Salaria and
even as far as Sant' Agnese. And then came an attempt to make quite a
little city, with church, school, and market, arise all at once on the
fields of the Castle of Sant' Angelo. And it was no question of small
dwellings for labourers, modest flats for employees, and others of
limited means; no, it was a question of colossal mansions three and four
storeys high, displaying uniform and endless facades which made these new
excentral quarters quite Babylonian, such districts, indeed, as only
capitals endowed with intense life, like Paris and London, could contrive
to populate. However, such were the monstrous products of pride and
gambling; and what a page of history, what a bitter lesson now that Rome,
financially ruined, is further disgraced by that hideous girdle of empty,
and, for the most part, uncompleted carcases, whose ruins already strew
the grassy streets!

The fatal collapse, the disaster proved a frightful one. Narcisse
explained its causes and recounted its phases so clearly that Pierre
fully understood. Naturally enough, numerous financial companies had
sprouted up: the Immobiliere, the Society d'Edilizia e Construzione, the
Fondaria, the Tiberiana, and the Esquilino. Nearly all of them built,
erected huge houses, entire streets of them, for purposes of sale; but
they also gambled in land, selling plots at large profit to petty
speculators, who