me one of the devouring
offsprings of conquest, eager to despoil that Italy, that Rome, which his
father seemed to have desired solely in order that he might pillage them
and batten on them. Orlando had vainly opposed Luigi's departure from the
ministry, his participation in the frantic speculations on land and house
property to which the mad building of the new districts had given rise.
But at the same time he loved his son, and was reduced to silence,
especially now when everything had succeeded with Luigi, even his most
risky financial ventures, such as the transformation of the Villa
Montefiori into a perfect town--a colossal enterprise in which many of
great wealth had been ruined, but whence he himself had emerged with
millions. And it was in part for this reason that Orlando, sad and
silent, had obstinately restricted himself to one small room on the third
floor of the little palazzo erected by Luigi in the Via Venti
Settembre--a room where he lived cloistered with a single servant,
subsisting on his own scanty income, and accepting nothing but that
modest hospitality from his son.

As Pierre reached that new Via Venti Settembre* which climbs the side and
summit of the Viminal hill, he was struck by the heavy sumptuousness of
the new "palaces," which betokened among the moderns the same taste for
the huge that marked the ancient Romans. In the warm afternoon glow,
blent of purple and old gold, the broad, triumphant thoroughfare, with
its endless rows of white house-fronts, bore witness to new Rome's proud
hope of futurity and sovereign power. And Pierre fairly gasped when he
beheld the Palazzo delle Finanze, or Treasury, a gigantic erection, a
cyclopean cube with a profusion of columns, balconies, pediments, and
sculptured work, to which the building mania had given birth in a day of
immoderate pride. And on the other side of the street, a little higher
up, before reaching the Villa Bonaparte, stood Count Prada's little
palazzo.

* The name--Twentieth September Street--was given to the
thoroughfare to commemorate the date of the occupation
of Rome by Victor Emmanuel's army.--Trans.

After discharging his driver, Pierre for a moment remained somewhat
embarrassed. The door was open, and he entered the vestibule; but, as at
the mansion in the Via Giulia, no door porter or servant was to be seen.
So he had to make up his mind to ascend the monumental stairs, which with
their marble balustrades seemed to