But it was the Tiber which impassioned Pierre; such was its melancholy majesty during those nocturnal hours.

Leaning over the parapet, he watched it gliding between the new walls, which looked like those of some black and monstrous prison built for a giant.
So long as lights gleamed in the windows of the houses opposite he saw the sluggish water flow by, showing slow, moire-like ripples there where the quivering reflections endowed it with a mysterious life.

And he often mused on the river's famous past and evoked the legends which assert that fabulous wealth lies buried in its muddy bed.

At each fresh invasion of the barbarians, and particularly when Rome was sacked, the treasures of palaces and temples are said to have been cast into the water to prevent them from falling into the hands of the conquerors.

Might not those golden bars trembling yonder in the glaucous stream be the branches of the famous candelabrum which Titus brought from Jerusalem?
Might not those pale patches whose shape remained uncertain amidst the frequent eddies indicate the white marble of statues and columns?
And those deep moires glittering with little flamelets, were they not promiscuous heaps of precious metal, cups, vases, ornaments enriched with gems?
What a dream was that of the swarming riches espied athwart the old river's bosom, of the hidden life of the treasures which were said to have slumbered there for centuries; and what a hope for the nation's pride and enrichment centred in the miraculous finds which might be made in the Tiber if one could some day dry it up and search its bed, as had already been suggested! Therein, perchance, lay Rome's new fortune.
However, on that black night, whilst Pierre leant over the parapet, it was stern reality alone which occupied his mind.