mile wreathing his thin lips now and
then, and showing white, wolfish teeth, his sinewy brown hands direct
in every little action, his soft voice the very music of a lie to those
who knew the terrible brief tones it had in wrath.

Long they sat, sipping the strong iced wine, toying with fruits and
nuts, talking of State affairs, of the Pope, of Maximilian, the jousting
Emperor,--discussing, perhaps, with a smile, his love of dress and the
beautiful fluted armour which he first invented;--of Lewis the Eleventh
of France, tottering to his grave, strangest compound of devotion,
avarice and fear that ever filled a throne; of Frederick of Naples, to
whom Caesar was to bear the crown within a few days; of Lucrezia's
quarrel with her husband, which had brought her to Rome; and at her name
Caesar's eyes blazed once and looked down at the strawberries on the
silver dish, and Gandia turned pale, and felt the chill of the night
air, and stately Vanozza rose slowly in the silence, and bade her evil
sons good-night, for it was late.

Two hours later, Gandia's thrice-stabbed corpse lay rolling and bobbing
at the Tiber's edge, as dead things do in the water, caught by its silks
and velvets in wild branches that dipped in the muddy stream; and the
waning moon rose as the dawn forelightened.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE COLOSSEUM]

If the secrets of old Rome could be known and told, they would fill the
world with books. Every stone has tasted blood, every house has had its
tragedy, every shrub and tree and blade of grass and wild flower has
sucked life from death, and blossoms on a grave. There is no end of
memories, in this one Region, as in all the rest. Far up by Porta Pia,
over against the new Treasury, under a modern street, lie the bones of
guilty Vestals, buried living, each in a little vault two fathoms deep,
with the small dish and crust and the earthen lamp that soon flickered
out in the close damp air; and there lies that innocent one, Domitian's
victim, who shrank from the foul help of the headsman's hand, as her
foot slipped on the fatal ladder, and fixed her pure eyes once upon the
rabble, and turned and went down alone into the deadly darkness. Down by
the Colosseum, where the ruins of Titus' Baths still stand in part,
stood Nero's dwelling palace, above the artificial lake in which the
Colosseum itself was built, and whose waters reflected the flames of the
great fire. To northward, in a contrast that leaps ages, r