They went, and spent a long time wandering round the divine mystery of the spot, looking at the moon through every arch. Then they sat on a shining column, and Daga said-- "I feel as if I were in the moon. Don't you think that in the moon one would feel just as one feels here in this great dead world?" "Yes," said Anania, answering his own inward question, "_this_ is Rome!" [Footnote 14: Huah-a-bye baby.] II It was raining. An ashy shadow burdened the room, of which Daga had given his companion the brighter part, because he liked sleeping till ten o'clock and was intolerant of the faintest light. Stretched on his bed Anania looked at the yellow screen, while he fancied a marble bas-relief yellowed by damp, and was conscious of discouragement, almost physical in its nature. Daga also sighed from his bed behind the screen. "What's the matter with _him_?" thought Anania irritated, "isn't he quite happy, rich, talented, esteemed?" He began to make comparisons. "He isn't in love, the fool! he has parents who worship him; he's independent--while I? Well then, what about me? Am I not happy? Aren't my blue devils called up by rain clouds, by nebulous monsters? I declare I'm mad! I love and am loved. I have before me a future of love and peace. I'm ambitious, perhaps I have only to open my arms to embrace the world. Margherita is beautiful. She is rich. She loves me and is waiting for me. What is it that I want? Why this stupid sadness?" Even his nostalgia was cured. Rome had by this time revealed herself before his eyes like some marvellous panorama emerging from the morning mists. She was now so delightful to him that one morning, looking down from the terrace of the Villa Medici on the refulgent picture drawn in the green hollow of the Campagna like a mother-o'-pearl city carved in a shell of emerald, and looking away to the lonely horizon which reminded him of the solitudes of Sardinia, he asked himself whether his new love for the Eternal City was not greater than the old love for his home. In his life of study he had felt the spirit of Rome, severe and gentle, blowing on his own little spirit. He was assiduous at his lectures, he frequented libraries, galleries, museums. Certain pictures had struck him--he felt as if he had already seen them. Where? when? By degrees he recognized that the feeling came from the resemblance between the figures in the picture to the people of his home. That Madonna of Correggio's has the dark face of Bustianeddu's mother; that old man of Spagnoletto's is the Bishop of Nuoro; and the sarcastic physiognomy of Uncle Pera, the gardener, lives in the copy of a picture by an unknown Tuscan of which the original is at Venice. Daily in the streets, the churches, the shops, Anania found objects of Art and of Beauty which filled him with enthusiasm. Ah! how beautiful was Rome! How he loved her! And yet--a shadow brooded upon all the love, all the enthusiasm, a cloud hung over all things.