Folks talked, too, of the Paris of the second empire, which had been so extended and transformed into a city of light and health.

But unfortunately on the banks of the Tiber there was neither any preconcerted general plan nor any clear-seeing man, master of the situation, supported by powerful financial organisations.

And the work, begun by pride, prompted by the ambition of surpassing the Rome of the Caesars and the Popes, the determination to make the eternal, predestined city the queen and centre of the world once more, was completed by speculation, one of those extraordinary gambling frenzies, those tempests which arise, rage, destroy, and carry everything away without premonitory warning or possibility of arresting their course.

All at once it was rumoured that land bought at five francs the metre had been sold again for a hundred francs the metre; and thereupon the fever arose--the fever of a nation which is passionately fond of gambling.

A flight of speculators descending from North Italy swooped down upon Rome, the noblest and easiest of preys.