hour, unable to drink in enough of the grandeur
of Rome, which, given all the unknown things she hid from him, he would
have liked to possess at once. Oh! to seize hold of her, know her,
ascertain at once the true word which he had come to seek from her! This
again, like Lourdes, was an experiment, but a graver one, a decisive one,
whence he would emerge either strengthened or overcome for evermore. He
no longer sought the simple, perfect faith of the little child, but the
superior faith of the intellectual man, raising himself above rites and
symbols, working for the greatest happiness of humanity as based on its
need of certainty. His temples throbbed responsive to his heart. What
would be the answer of Rome?

The sunlight had increased and the higher districts now stood out more
vigorously against the fiery background. Far away the hills became gilded
and empurpled, whilst the nearer house-fronts grew very distinct and
bright with their thousands of windows sharply outlined. However, some
morning haze still hovered around; light veils seemed to rise from the
lower streets, blurring the summits for a moment, and then evaporating in
the ardent heavens where all was blue. For a moment Pierre fancied that
the Palatine had vanished, for he could scarcely see the dark fringe of
cypresses; it was as though the dust of its ruins concealed the hill. But
the Quirinal was even more obscured; the royal palace seemed to have
faded away in a fog, so paltry did it look with its low flat front, so
vague in the distance that he no longer distinguished it; whereas above
the trees on his left the dome of St. Peter's had grown yet larger in the
limpid gold of the sunshine, and appeared to occupy the whole sky and
dominate the whole city!

Ah! the Rome of that first meeting, the Rome of early morning, whose new
districts he had not even noticed in the burning fever of his
arrival--with what boundless hopes did she not inspirit him, this Rome
which he believed he should find alive, such indeed as he had dreamed!
And whilst he stood there in his thin black cassock, thus gazing on her
that lovely day, what a shout of coming redemption seemed to arise from
her house-roofs, what a promise of universal peace seemed to issue from
that sacred soil, twice already Queen of the world! It was the third
Rome, it was New Rome whose maternal love was travelling across the
frontiers to all the nations to console them and reunite them in a common
embra