From the Quai du Rosaire the swans were no longer visible. Noemi had
watched them in the morning, disporting themselves on the water,
blurring with their stately movements the still reflection of that pile
of houses and cottages that raise their long, big-eared faces out of
the water, like weird, glutted beasts, staring stupidly, some in one
direction, some in another, all herded together by the dominating tower
of the Halles. The moon shone across the houses, throwing shadows on
some glorifying roof-tree and pinnacle, the peaked cap of a Chaldean
magician which crowned a little turret, and above it all, stood out the
sublime octagonal diadem of the mighty tower. But no beam fell on the
dark waters. Nevertheless Jeanne and Noerni leaned for some time against
the parapet, gazing into the gloomy depths; Noemi talked incessantly.
They lingered so long that Carlino had time to fill three or four pages
of his note-book, and to sketch the frieze with which an ambitious
Bruges merchant had adorned his house, even introducing the memorable
date 1716, the year in which the sun, the moon, and the stars had first
beheld it.

The monk, said Noemi, was a Benedictine, by name Don Clemente, belonging
to the monastery of Santa Scolastica at Subiaco. He was an acquaintance
of the Selvas, and Giovanni had first met him near some ruins on the
path leading to Spello, and after having inquired the way, had entered
into conversation with him. He looked little over thirty, and was
of refined manner and bearing. They began to talk of the ruins; the
conversation then drifted on to monasteries and monastic rules, and
finally to religion. The very voice of the Benedictine seemed to breathe
an odour of sanctity; nevertheless it was evident at the same time that
his was a mind that hungered after knowledge and modern thought. They
had parted with a mutual desire for, and the promise of, another