huge
black stake; and then the remains of another aqueduct spanned the road,
assuming yet greater dimensions against the sunset glow. Ah! that unique
hour, the hour of twilight in the Campagna, when all is blotted out and
simplified, the hour of bare immensity, of the infinite in its simplest
expression! There is nothing, nothing all around you, but the flat line
of the horizon with the one splotch of an isolated tower, and yet that
nothing is instinct with sovereign majesty.

However, on the left, towards the sea, the sun was setting, descending in
the limpid sky like a globe of fire of blinding redness. It slowly
plunged beneath the horizon, and the only sign of cloud was some fiery
vapour, as if indeed the distant sea had seethed at contact with that
royal and flaming visit. And directly the sun had disappeared the heavens
above it purpled and became a lake of blood, whilst the Campagna turned
to grey. At the far end of the fading plain there remained only that
purple lake whose brasier slowly died out behind the black arches of the
aqueduct, while in the opposite direction the scattered arches remained
bright and rosy against a pewter-like sky. Then the fiery vapour was
dissipated, and the sunset ended by fading away. One by one the stars
came out in the pacified vault, now of an ashen blue, while the lights of
Rome, still far away on the verge of the horizon, scintillated like the
lamps of light-houses.

And Prada, amidst the dreamy silence of his companions and the infinite
melancholy of the evening and the inexpressible distress which even he
experienced, continued to ask himself what course he should adopt. Again
and again he mentally repeated that he could not allow people to be
poisoned. The figs were certainly intended for Cardinal Boccanera, and on
the whole it mattered little to him whether there were a cardinal the
more or the fewer in the world. Moreover, it had always seemed to him
best to let Destiny follow its course; and, infidel that he was, he saw
no harm in one priest devouring another. Again, it might be dangerous for
him to intervene in that abominable affair, to mix himself up in the
base, fathomless intrigues of the black world. But on the other hand the
Cardinal was not the only person who lived in the Boccanera mansion, and
might not the figs go to others, might they not be eaten by people to
whom no harm was intended? This idea of a treacherous chance haunted him,
and in spite of every eff