There's nothing very amusing to be seen in it, whatever they may say to the contrary." When Pierre found himself alone, he suddenly felt overwhelmed by all the fatigue of his journey coupled with the fever of enthusiasm that had consumed him during the morning.

And as though dazed, intoxicated by the hasty meal which he had just made--a couple of eggs and a cutlet--he flung himself upon the bed with the idea of taking half an hour's rest.
He did not fall asleep immediately, but for a time thought of those Boccaneras, with whose history he was partly acquainted, and of whose life in that deserted and silent palace, instinct with such dilapidated and melancholy grandeur, he began to dream.

But at last his ideas grew confused, and by degrees he sunk into sleep amidst a crowd of shadowy forms, some tragic and some sweet, with vague faces which gazed at him with enigmatical eyes as they whirled before him in the depths of dreamland.
The Boccaneras had supplied two popes to Rome, one in the thirteenth, the other in the fifteenth century, and from those two favoured ones, those all-powerful masters, the family had formerly derived its vast fortune--large estates in the vicinity of Viterbo, several palaces in Rome, enough works of art to fill numerous spacious galleries, and a pile of gold sufficient to cram a cellar.

The family passed as being the most pious of the Roman _patriziato_, a family of burning faith whose sword had always been at the service of the Church; but if it were the most believing family it was also the most violent, the most disputatious, constantly at war, and so fiercely savage that the anger of the Boccaneras had become proverbial.

And thence came their arms, the winged dragon spitting flames, and the fierce, glowing motto, with its play on the name "_Bocca sera, Alma rossa_" (black mouth, red soul), the mouth darkened by a roar, the soul flaming like a brazier of faith and love.
Legends of endless passion, of terrible deeds of justice and vengeance still circulated.