even if old Rome were killed and artists
scandalised. Doubtless the Trastevere was already greatly changed,
pierced with several new thoroughfares which let the sun stream in. And
amidst the _abattis_ of rubbish and the spacious clearings, where nothing
new had yet been erected, the remaining portions of the old district
seemed even blacker and more loathsome. Some day, no doubt, it would all
be rebuilt, but how interesting was this phase of the city's evolution:
old Rome expiring and new Rome just dawning amidst countless
difficulties! To appreciate the change it was necessary to have known the
filthy Rome of the past, swamped by sewage in every form. The recently
levelled Ghetto had, over a course of centuries, so rotted the soil on
which it stood that an awful pestilential odour yet arose from its bare
site. It was only fitting that it should long remain waste, so that it
might dry and become purified in the sun. In all the districts on either
side of the Tiber where extensive improvements have been undertaken you
find the same scenes. You follow some narrow, damp, evil-smelling street
with black house-fronts and overhanging roofs, and suddenly come upon a
clearing as in a forest of ancient leprous hovels. There are squares,
broad footways; lofty white carved buildings yet in the rough, littered
with rubbish and fenced off. On every side you find as it were a huge
building yard, which the financial crisis perpetuates; the city of
to-morrow arrested in its growth, stranded there in its monstrous,
precocious, surprising infancy. Nevertheless, therein lies good and
healthful work, such as was and is absolutely necessary if Rome is to
become a great modern city, instead of being left to rot, to dwindle into
a mere ancient curiosity, a museum show-piece.

That day, as Pierre went from the Trastevere to the Palazzo Farnese,
where he was expected, he chose a roundabout route, following the Via di
Pettinari and the Via dei Giubbonari, the former so dark and narrow with
a great hospital wall on one side and a row of wretched houses on the
other, and the latter animated by a constant stream of people and
enlivened by the jewellers' windows, full of big gold chains, and the
displays of the drapers' shops, where stuffs hung in bright red, blue,
green, and yellow lengths. And the popular district through which he had
roamed and the trading district which he was now crossing reminded him of
the castle fields with their mass of work