The Project Gutenberg EBook of Cecilia, by F. Marion Crawford

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Cecilia
A Story of Modern Rome

Author: F. Marion Crawford

Release Date: March 21, 2010 [EBook #31723]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CECILIA ***

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Joanna Johnston and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

CECILIA

A Story of Modern Rome

BY

F. MARION CRAWFORD

AUTHOR OF "SARACINESCA," "MARIETTA," "AVE ROMA
IMMORTALIS," ETC.

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1902

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1902,

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped October, 1902.

Sixteenth Thousand

* NORWOOD PRESS *
J. S. CUSHING & CO. - BERWICK & SMITH
* NORWOOD MASS. U.S.A. *

CECILIA

A STORY OF MODERN ROME

CHAPTER I

Two men were sitting side by side on a stone bench in the forgotten
garden of the Arcadian Society, in Rome; and it was in early spring, not
long ago. Few people, Romans or strangers, ever find their way to that
lonely and beautiful spot beyond the Tiber, niched in a hollow of the
Janiculum below San Pietro in Montorio, where Beatrice Cenci sleeps. The
Arcadians were men and women who loved poetry in an artificial time,
took names of shepherds and shepherdesses, rhymed as best they could,
met in pleasant places to recite their verses, and played that the world
was young, and gentle, and sweet, and unpoisoned, just when it had
declined to one of its recurring periods of vicious old age. The Society