AGRO ROMANO
The landau that the Breton family was in took the Appian, Way, and Cæsar and Don Calixto’s carriage followed behind it.
They passed the tomb of Cecilia Metella, and were able to look ahead along the old road, on whose sides one sees the remains of aqueducts, which at evening-fall have a grandeur so imposing. Don Calixto and Don Justo were discussing a question of home politics.
On them magnificently indifferent, the broken sepulchres, the abandoned arches invaded by grass, the vestiges of a gigantic civilization, did not produce the least impression.
The coachman pointed out Frascati on the slope of a mountain, Albano, Grotta Ferrata, and Tivoli.
Cæsar felt the grandeur of the landscape; the enormous sadness of the remnants of aqueducts, which had the colour of rusty iron, beneath a sky of pink clouds.
At dusk they turned back. Cæsar felt a weight on his spirits. The walls of the Baths of Caracalla looked threatening to him. Those great towering thick walls, broken, brick-colour, burned by the sun, gave him an impression of the strength of the past. There were no trees, no houses near them; as if those imposing ruins precluded any life round about. Only one humble almond-tree held out its white flowers.
Don Calixto and the Canon continued chatting.