You know, Dario, that I mean to be betrothed before the end of the month.

Oh yes, I intend to make my father give a grand entertainment.

And how nice it would be if the two weddings could take place at the same time!" Two days later, after a long ramble through the Trastevere district, followed by a visit to the Palazzo Farnese, Pierre felt that he could at last understand the terrible, melancholy truth about Rome.

He had several times already strolled through the Trastevere, attracted towards its wretched denizens by his compassion for all who suffered.

Ah! that quagmire of wretchedness and ignorance! He knew of abominable nooks in the faubourgs of Paris, frightful "rents" and "courts" where people rotted in heaps, but there was nothing in France to equal the listless, filthy stagnation of the Trastevere.