"It is scarcely more than four o'clock, and we will sit down here for a while, as I am told that the Holy Father sometimes passes this way to go down to the gardens.

It would be really lucky if you could see him, perhaps even speak to him--who can tell?
At all events, it will rest you, for you must be tired out." Narcisse was known to all the attendants, and his relationship to Monsignor Gamba gave him the run of almost the entire Vatican, where he was fond of spending his leisure time.

Finding two chairs, they sat down, and the _attache_ again began to talk of art.
How astonishing had been the destiny of Rome, what a singular, borrowed royalty had been hers! She seemed like a centre whither the whole world converged, but where nothing grew from the soil itself, which from the outset appeared to be stricken with sterility.

The arts required to be acclimatised there; it was necessary to transplant the genius of neighbouring nations, which, once there, however, flourished magnificently.

Under the emperors, when Rome was the queen of the earth, the beauty of her monuments and sculpture came to her from Greece.