ny of the ruined princes, on the verge of
starvation, have done; that is, unless the Cardinal and Donna Serafina
had opposed such a match, which would not have been surprising, proud and
stubborn as they are, anxious to preserve the purity of their old Roman
blood. However, let us hope that Dario and the exquisite Benedetta will
some day be happy together."

Narcisse paused; but, after taking a few steps in silence, he added in a
lower tone: "I've a relative who picked up nearly three millions in that
Villa Montefiori affair. Ah! I regret that I wasn't here in those heroic
days of speculation. It must have been very amusing; and what strokes
there were for a man of self-possession to make!"

However, all at once, as he raised his head, he saw before him the
Quartiere dei Prati--the new district of the castle fields; and his face
thereupon changed: he again became an artist, indignant with the modern
abominations with which old Rome had been disfigured. His eyes paled, and
a curl of his lips expressed the bitter disdain of a dreamer whose
passion for the vanished centuries was sorely hurt: "Look, look at it
all!" he exclaimed. "To think of it, in the city of Augustus, the city of
Leo X, the city of eternal power and eternal beauty!"

Pierre himself was thunderstruck. The meadows of the Castle of Sant'
Angelo, dotted with a few poplar trees, had here formerly stretched
alongside the Tiber as far as the first slopes of Monte Mario, thus
supplying, to the satisfaction of artists, a foreground or greenery to
the Borgo and the dome of St. Peter's. But now, amidst the white,
leprous, overturned plain, there stood a town of huge, massive houses,
cubes of stone-work, invariably the same, with broad streets intersecting
one another at right angles. From end to end similar facades appeared,
suggesting series of convents, barracks, or hospitals. Extraordinary and
painful was the impression produced by this town so suddenly immobilised
whilst in course of erection. It was as if on some accursed morning a
wicked magician had with one touch of his wand stopped the works and
emptied the noisy stone-yards, leaving the buildings in mournful
abandonment. Here on one side the soil had been banked up; there deep
pits dug for foundations had remained gaping, overrun with weeds. There
were houses whose halls scarcely rose above the level of the soil; others
which had been raised to a second or third floor; others, again, which
had been carr