ce. In the passionate candour of his dream he beheld her, he heard
her, rejuvenated, full of the gentleness of childhood, soaring, as it
were, amidst the morning freshness into the vast pure heavens.

But at last Pierre tore himself away from the sublime spectacle. The
driver and the horse, their heads drooping under the broad sunlight, had
not stirred. On the seat the valise was almost burning, hot with rays of
the sun which was already heavy. And once more Pierre got into the
vehicle and gave this address:

"Via Giulia, Palazzo Boccanera."

II.

THE Via Giulia, which runs in a straight line over a distance of five
hundred yards from the Farnese palace to the church of St. John of the
Florentines, was at that hour steeped in bright sunlight, the glow
streaming from end to end and whitening the small square paving stones.
The street had 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,