"We must go back," said the guide, "the gardens of the Villa Mills and the convent of San Bonaventura stop the way.

We shall only be able to pass on this side when the excavations have made a clearance.

Ah! Monsieur l'Abbe, if you had walked over the Palatine merely some fifty years ago! I've seen some plans of that time.

There were only some vineyards and little gardens with hedges then, a real campagna, where not a soul was to be met.

And to think that all these palaces were sleeping underneath!" Pierre followed him, and after again passing the house of Augustus, they ascended the slope and reached the vast Flavian palace,* still half buried by the neighbouring villa, and composed of a great number of halls large and small, on the nature of which scholars are still arguing.