d
should crumble somewhere to heed it not!

"One thing which greatly pleases me," suddenly said the young Prince, "is
that Monsieur l'Abbe has ended by falling in love with Rome."

Pierre admitted it with a good grace.

"We told you so," remarked Benedetta. "A great deal of time is needed for
one to understand and love Rome. If you had only stayed here for a
fortnight you would have gone off with a deplorable idea of us, but now
that you have been here for two full months we are quite at ease, for you
will never think of us without affection."

She looked exceedingly charming as she spoke these words, and Pierre
again bowed. However, he had already given thought to the phenomenon, and
fancied he could explain it. When a stranger comes to Rome he brings with
him a Rome of his own, a Rome such as he dreams of, so ennobled by
imagination that the real Rome proves a terrible disenchantment. And so
it is necessary to wait for habituation, for the mediocrity of the
reality to soften, and for the imagination to have time to kindle again,
and only behold things such as they are athwart the prodigious splendour
of the past.

However, Celia had risen and was taking leave. "Good-bye, dear," she
said; "I hope the wedding will soon take place. You know, Dario, that I
mean to be betrothed before the end of the month. Oh yes, I intend to
make my father give a grand entertainment. And how nice it would be if
the two weddings could take place at the same time!"

Two days later, after a long ramble through the Trastevere district,
followed by a visit to the Palazzo Farnese, Pierre felt that he could at
last understand the terrible, melancholy truth about Rome. He had several
times already strolled through the Trastevere, attracted towards its
wretched denizens by his compassion for all who suffered. Ah! that
quagmire of wretchedness and ignorance! He knew of abominable nooks in
the faubourgs of Paris, frightful "rents" and "courts" where people
rotted in heaps, but there was nothing in France to equal the listless,
filthy stagnation of the Trastevere. On the brightest days a dank gloom
chilled the sinuous, cellar-like lanes, and the smell of rotting
vegetables, rank oil, and human animality brought on fits of nausea.
Jumbled together in a confusion which artists of romantic turn would
admire, the antique, irregular houses had black, gaping entrances diving
below ground, outdoor stairways conducting to upper floors, and wooden
balc