that blurred background the whole city showed with violent
distinctness in great patches of light and shade, their tracery harshly
conspicuous. One might have fancied oneself above some very ancient,
abandoned stone quarry, which a few clumps of trees spotted with dark
green. Of the ancient city one could see the sunburnt tower of the
Capitol, the black cypresses of the Palatine, and the ruins of the palace
of Septimius Severus, suggesting the white osseous carcase of some fossil
monster, left there by a flood. In front, was enthroned the modern city
with the long, renovated buildings of the Quirinal, whose yellow walls
stood forth with wondrous crudity amidst the vigorous crests of the
garden trees. And to right and left on the Viminal, beyond the palace,
the new districts appeared like a city of chalk and plaster mottled by
innumerable windows as with a thousand touches of black ink. Then here
and there were the Pincio showing like a stagnant mere, the Villa Medici
uprearing its campanili, the castle of Sant' Angelo brown like rust, the
spire of Santa Maria Maggiore aglow like a burning taper, the three
churches of the Aventine drowsy amidst verdure, the Palazzo Farnese with
its summer-baked tiles showing like old gold, the domes of the Gesu, of
Sant' Andrea della Valle, of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, and yet other
domes and other domes, all in fusion, incandescent in the brazier of the
heavens. And Pierre again felt a heart-pang in presence of that harsh,
stern Rome, so different from the Rome of his dream, the Rome of
rejuvenescence and hope, which he had fancied he had found on his first
morning, but which had now faded away to give place to the immutable city
of pride and domination, stubborn under the sun even unto death.

And there on high, all alone with his thoughts, Pierre suddenly
understood. It was as if a dart of flaming light fell on him in that
free, unbounded expanse where he hovered. Had it come from the ceremony
which he had just beheld, from the frantic cry of servitude still ringing
in his ears? Had it come from the spectacle of that city beneath him,
that city which suggested an embalmed queen still reigning amidst the
dust of her tomb? He knew not; but doubtless both had acted as factors,
and at all events the light which fell upon his mind was complete: he
felt that Catholicism could not exist without the temporal power, that it
must fatally disappear whenever it should no longer be king over this