The present had disappeared, and the ocean of the past was still rising, buoying him up, carrying him away.
And then his mind involuntarily pictured a resurrection instinct with life.

The grey, dismal Palatine, razed like some accursed city, suddenly became animated, peopled, crowned with palaces and temples.

There had been the cradle of the Eternal City, founded by Romulus on that summit overlooking the Tiber.

There assuredly the seven kings of its two and a half centuries of monarchical rule had dwelt, enclosed within high, strong walls, which had but three gateways.

Then the five centuries of republican sway spread out, the greatest, the most glorious of all the centuries, those which brought the Italic peninsula and finally the known world under Roman dominion.