lando interrupted him with a soft, bantering laugh: "Oh! you would
build it up again; that's fortunate!" he said.

"I would build it up again," the young man replied, in the trembling
voice of an inspired prophet. "I would build it up again oh, so vast, so
beautiful, and so noble! Will not the universal democracy of to-morrow,
humanity when it is at last freed, need an unique city, which shall be
the ark of alliance, the very centre of the world? And is not Rome
designated, Rome which the prophecies have marked as eternal and
immortal, where the destinies of the nations are to be accomplished? But
in order that it may become the final definitive sanctuary, the capital
of the destroyed kingdoms, where the wise men of all countries shall meet
once every year, one must first of all purify it by fire, leave nothing
of its old stains remaining. Then, when the sun shall have absorbed all
the pestilence of the old soil, we will rebuild the city ten times more
beautiful and ten times larger than it has ever been. And what a city of
truth and justice it will at last be, the Rome that has been announced
and awaited for three thousand years, all in gold and all in marble,
filling the Campagna from the sea to the Sabine and the Alban mountains,
and so prosperous and so sensible that its twenty millions of inhabitants
after regulating the law of labour will live with the unique joy of
being. Yes, yes, Rome the Mother, Rome the Queen, alone on the face of
the earth and for all eternity!"

Pierre listened to him, aghast. What! did the blood of Augustus go to
such a point as this? The popes had not become masters of Rome without
feeling impelled to rebuild it in their passion to rule over the world;
young Italy, likewise yielding to the hereditary madness of universal
domination, had in its turn sought to make the city larger than any
other, erecting whole districts for people who had never come, and now
even the Anarchists were possessed by the same stubborn dream of the
race, a dream beyond all measure this time, a fourth and monstrous Rome,
whose suburbs would invade continents in order that liberated humanity,
united in one family, might find sufficient lodging! This was the climax.
Never could more extravagant proof be given of the blood of pride and
sovereignty which had scorched the veins of that race ever since Augustus
had bequeathed it the inheritance of his absolute empire, with the
furious instinct that the world legally be