: the fallen government of the Vatican
must be shown what Italy was capable of achieving, what splendour she
would bestow on the new and third Rome, which, by the magnificence of its
thoroughfares and the multitude of its people, would far excel either the
imperial or the papal city.

True, during the early years some prudence was observed; wisely enough,
houses were only built in proportion as they were required. The
population had doubled at one bound, rising from two to four hundred
thousand souls, thanks to the arrival of the little world of employees
and officials of the public services--all those who live on the State or
hope to live on it, without mentioning the idlers and enjoyers of life
whom a Court always carries in its train. However, this influx of
newcomers was a first cause of intoxication, for every one imagined that
the increase would continue, and, in fact, become more and more rapid.
And so the city of the day before no longer seemed large enough; it was
necessary to make immediate preparations for the morrow's need by
enlarging Rome on all sides. Folks talked, too, of the Paris of the
second empire, which had been so extended and transformed into a city of
light and health. But unfortunately on the banks of the Tiber there was
neither any preconcerted general plan nor any clear-seeing man, master of
the situation, supported by powerful financial organisations. And the
work, begun by pride, prompted by the ambition of surpassing the Rome of
the Caesars and the Popes, the determination to make the eternal,
predestined city the queen and centre of the world once more, was
completed by speculation, one of those extraordinary gambling frenzies,
those tempests which arise, rage, destroy, and carry everything away
without premonitory warning or possibility of arresting their course. All
at once it was rumoured that land bought at five francs the metre had
been sold again for a hundred francs the metre; and thereupon the fever
arose--the fever of a nation which is passionately fond of gambling. A
flight of speculators descending from North Italy swooped down upon Rome,
the noblest and easiest of preys. Those needy, famished mountaineers
found spoils for every appetite in that voluptuous South where life is so
benign, and the very delights of the climate helped to corrupt and hasten
moral gangrene. At first, too; it was merely necessary to stoop; money
was to be found by the shovelful among the rubbish of the