ad no footways, and the cab rolled along it almost to the
farther extremity, passing the old grey sleepy and deserted residences
whose large windows were barred with iron, while their deep porches
revealed sombre courts resembling wells. Laid out by Pope Julius II, who
had dreamt of lining it with magnificent palaces, the street, then the
most regular and handsome in Rome, had served as Corso* in the sixteenth
century. One could tell that one was in a former luxurious district,
which had lapsed into silence, solitude, and abandonment, instinct with a
kind of religious gentleness and discretion. The old house-fronts
followed one after another, their shutters closed and their gratings
occasionally decked with climbing plants. At some doors cats were seated,
and dim shops, appropriated to humble trades, were installed in certain
dependencies. But little traffic was apparent. Pierre only noticed some
bare-headed women dragging children behind them, a hay cart drawn by a
mule, a superb monk draped in drugget, and a bicyclist speeding along
noiselessly, his machine sparkling in the sun.

* The Corso was so called on account of the horse races held in
it at carnival time.--Trans.

At last the driver turned and pointed to a large square building at the
corner of a lane running towards the Tiber.

"Palazzo Boccanera."

Pierre raised his head and was pained by the severe aspect of the
structure, so bare and massive and blackened by age. Like its neighbours
the Farnese and Sacchetti palaces, it had been built by Antonio da
Sangallo in the early part of the sixteenth century, and, as with the
former of those residences, the tradition ran that in raising the pile
the architect had made use of stones pilfered from the Colosseum and the
Theatre of Marcellus. The vast, square-looking facade had three upper
stories, each with seven windows, and the first one very lofty and noble.
Down below, the only sign of decoration was that the high ground-floor
windows, barred with huge projecting gratings as though from fear of
siege, rested upon large consoles, and were crowned by attics which
smaller consoles supported. Above the monumental entrance, with folding
doors of bronze, there was a balcony in front of the central first-floor
window. And at the summit of the facade against the sky appeared a
sumptuous entablature, whose frieze displayed admirable grace and purity
of ornamentation. The frieze, the consoles, the attics, and the d