After this came the rooms which the Pope occupied during his captivity—rooms that had double and treble memories; here a nuptial-chamber, there a room all a-glitter with gilding—a room that had sheltered Charles the Fifth, and afterwards fair, and not altogether fortunate, Anne of Austria. Daphne felt as if her brain would hardly hold so much history. She felt a kind of relief when they came to a theatre, where plays had been acted before Napoleon the Third and his lovely empress in days that seemed to belong to her own life. ‘I think I was born then,’ she said naïvely. There had been no other visitors—no tourists of high or low degree. The two girls and the unknown had had the palace to themselves, and the guide, mollified by a five-franc piece slipped into his hand by the gentleman, had allowed them to make their circuit at a somewhat more leisurely pace than that brisk trot on which he usually insisted. Yet for all this it was still early when they came down the double flight of steps and found themselves once again in the quadrangle, the Court of Farewells, so called from the day when the great emperor bade adieu to pomp and power, and passed like a splendid apparition from the scene he had glorified. The sun had lost none of his fervour—nay, had ascended to his topmost heaven, and was pouring down his rays upon the baking earth. ‘Let us go to the gardens and feed the carp,’ said Nero, and it was an infinite relief, were it only for the refreshment of the eye, to find themselves under green leaves and by the margin of a lovely lake, statues of white marble gleaming yonder at the end of verdant arcades, fountains plashing. Here under the trees a delicious coolness and stillness contrasted with the glare of light on the open space yonder, where an old woman sat at a stall, set out with cakes and sweetmeats, ready to supply food for the carp-feeders. ‘Yes: let us feed the carp,’ cried Daphne, running out into this sunlit space, her white gown looking like some saintly raiment in the supernatural light of a transfiguration. ‘That will be lovely! I have heard of them. They are intensely old, are they not—older than the palace itself?’ ‘They are said to have been here when Henry and Diana walked in yonder alleys,’ replied Nero. ‘I believe they were here when the Roman legions conquered Gaul. One thing seems as likely as the other, doesn’t it, Poppæa?’ ‘I don’t know about that: but I like to think they are intensely old,’ answered Daphne, leaning on the iron railing, and looking down at the fish, which were already competing for her favours, feeling assured she meant to feed them. The old woman got up from her stool, and came over to ask if the young lady would like some bread for the carp. ‘Yes, please—a lot,’ cried Daphne, and she began to fumble in her pocket for the little purse with its three or four francs and half-francs.