heathen-world, the eternal Rome; and when he heard, on the _Ponte
Molle_, that he was now going across the Tiber, then was it to him as
if the past had risen from the dead, as if the stream of time ran
backward and bore him with it; under the streams of heaven he heard
the seven old mountain-streams, rushing and roaring, which once came
down from Rome's hills, and, with seven arms, uphove the world from
its foundations. At length the constellation of the mountain city of
God, that stood so broad before him, opened out into distant nights;
cities, with scattered lights, lay up and down, and the bells (which
to his ear were alarm-bells) sounded out the fourth hour; [3] when the
carriage rolled through the triumphal gate of the city, the _Porta del
Popolo_, then the moon rent her black heavens, and poured down out of
the cleft clouds the splendor of a whole sky. There stood the Egyptian
Obelisk of the gateway, high as the clouds, in the night, and three
streets ran gleaming apart. "So," (said Albano to himself, as they
passed through the long _Corso_ to the tenth ward) "thou art veritably
in the camp of the God of war--here is where he grasped the hilt of
the monstrous war-sword, and with the point made the three wounds in
three quarters of the world!" Rain and splendor gushed through the
vast, broad streets; occasionally he passed suddenly along by gardens,
and into broad city-deserts and market-places of the past. The rolling
of the carriages amidst the rush and roar of the rain resembled the
thunder whose days were once holy to this heroic city, like the
thundering heaven to the thundering earth; muffled-up forms, with
little lights, stole through the dark streets; often there stood a
long palace with colonnades in the light of the moon, often a solitary
gray column, often a single high fir tree, or a statue behind
cypresses. Once, when there was neither rain nor moonshine, the
carriage went round the corner of a large house, on whose roof a tall,
blooming virgin, with an uplooking child on her arm, herself directed