ut the house. The Count made haste to pay for them, and called
to Pierre, who was lingering behind: "We must look sharp! We sha'n't
reach Rome now until it is quite dark."

They found Santobono quietly waiting in the carriage, where he had again
installed himself on the bracket with his spine resting against the
box-seat and his long legs drawn back under him, and he again had the
little basket of figs on his knees, and clasped it with his big knotty
hands as though it were something fragile and rare which the slightest
jolting might damage. His cassock showed like a huge blot, and in his
coarse ashen face, that of a peasant yet near to the wild soil and but
slightly polished by a few years of theological studies, his eyes alone
seemed to live, glowing with the dark flame of a devouring passion. On
seeing him seated there in such composure Prada could not restrain a
slight shudder. Then, as soon as the victoria was again rolling along the
road, he exclaimed: "Well, Abbe, that glass of wine will guarantee us
against the malaria. The Pope would soon be cured if he could imitate our
example."

Santobono's only reply was a growl. He was in no mood for conversation,
but wrapped himself in perfect silence, as in the night which was slowly
falling. And Prada in his turn ceased to speak, and, with his eyes still
fixed upon the other, reflected on the course that he should follow.

The road turned, and then the carriage rolled on and on over another
interminable straight highway with white paving, whose brilliancy made
the road look like a ribbon of snow stretching across the Campagna, where
delicate shadows were slowly falling. Gloom gathered in the hollows of
the broad undulations whence a tide of violet hue seemed to spread over
the short herbage until all mingled and the expanse became an indistinct
swell of neutral hue from one to the other horizon. And the solitude was
now yet more complete; a last indolent cart had gone by and a last
tinkling of horses' bells had subsided in the distance. There was no
longer a passer-by, no longer a beast of the fields to be seen, colour
and sound died away, all forms of life sank into slumber, into the serene
stillness of nihility. Some fragments of an aqueduct were still to be
seen at intervals on the right hand, where they looked like portions of
gigantic millepeds severed by the scythe of time; next, on the left, came
another tower, whose dark and ruined pile barred the sky as with a