shade spread over it the stream became opaque like mud, so
turbid in its venerable old age that it no longer even gave back a
reflection of the houses lining it. And how desolate was its abandonment,
what a stream of silence and solitude it was! After the winter rains it
might roll furiously and threateningly, but during the long months of
bright weather it traversed Rome without a sound, and Pierre could remain
there all day long without seeing either a skiff or a sail. The two or
three little steam-boats which arrived from the coast, the few tartanes
which brought wine from Sicily, never came higher than the Aventine,
beyond which there was only a watery desert in which here and there, at
long intervals, a motionless angler let his line dangle. All that Pierre
ever saw in the way of shipping was a sort of ancient, covered pinnace, a
rotting Noah's ark, moored on the right beside the old bank, and he
fancied that it might be used as a washhouse, though on no occasion did
he see any one in it. And on a neck of mud there also lay a stranded boat
with one side broken in, a lamentable symbol of the impossibility and the
relinquishment of navigation. Ah! that decay of the river, that decay of
father Tiber, as dead as the famous ruins whose dust he is weary of
laving! And what an evocation! all the centuries of history, so many
things, so many men, that those yellow waters have reflected till, full
of lassitude and disgust, they have grown heavy, silent and deserted,
longing only for annihilation.

One morning on the river bank Pierre found La Pierina standing behind an
abandoned tool-shed. With her neck extended, she was looking fixedly at
the window of Dario's room, at the corner of the quay and the lane.
Doubtless she had been frightened by Victorine's severe reception, and
had not dared to return to the mansion; but some servant, possibly, had
told her which was the young Prince's window, and so she now came to this
spot, where without wearying she waited for a glimpse of the man she
loved, for some sign of life and salvation, the mere hope of which made
her heart leap. Deeply touched by the way in which she hid herself, all
humility and quivering with adoration, the priest approached her, and
instead of scolding her and driving her away as he had been asked to do,
spoke to her in a gentle, cheerful manner, asking her for news of her
people as though nothing had happened, and at last contriving to mention
Dario's name in