thousands of Romans intent upon some gladiatorial feat; the guards outside the endless doors, the numbers of which can still be seen, giving entrance to separate sections and tiers of seats; and the vast array of civic life which must have surged about. I wondered whether there were venders who sold sweets or food and what their cries were in Latin. One could think of the endless procession that wound its way here on gala days. Time works melancholy changes. I left as the sun was going down, tremendously impressed with the wonder of a life that is utterly gone. It was like finding the glistening shell of an extinct beetle or the suggestion in rocks of a prehistoric world. As I returned to my hotel along the thoroughly modern streets with their five- and six-story tenement and apartment buildings, their street cars and customary vehicles, their newspaper, flower and cigar stands, I tried to restore and keep in my mind a suggestion of the magnificence that Gibbon makes so significant. It was hard; for be one’s imagination what it will, it is difficult to live outside of one’s own day and hour. The lights already beginning to flourish in the smart shops, distracted my mood. CHAPTER XXXII MRS. Q. AND THE BORGIA FAMILY “I am going to introduce you to such a nice woman,” Mrs. Barfleur told me the second morning I was in Rome, in her very enthusiastic way. “She is charming. I am sure you will like her. She comes from America somewhere--New York, I think. Her husband is an author, I believe. I heard so.” She chattered on in her genial, talk-making way. “I don’t understand these American women; they go traveling about Europe without their husbands in such a strange way. Now, you know in England we would not think of doing anything of that kind.”