I walked along the Appian Way, and the desolation of the Campagna, with its fragments of broken arches, its ruined aqueducts and the distant hills, which on a day like this seem curiously near and distinct, came over me. In the distance, above Rome itself, the clouds had slightly lifted, and St. Peter’s was lit up by a watery gleam of light. I cannot describe to you the beauty and the melancholy of the scene. All at once, while I was standing by the grassy plain and looking towards Rome, I became aware of a plaintive sound: a Roman shepherd boy dressed in sheepskins was tootling one or two monotonous notes on a wooden pipe. His music seemed to complete the landscape, and to express the very spirit of the Campagna, which brings home to me the Rome of ancient days more poignantly and more nearly than all monuments and museums. The veil which had hung over me during all these days was abruptly lifted. The old spell and the old charm returned, and I could say to myself: “This is Rome! I have at last found what I was seeking.” I had remained for some time musing, when I suddenly noticed that a man was sitting not far from me, seated on a stool and making a sketch in water-colour of a broken archway. He had been there the whole time, but I had not noticed him. I do not know why, but I felt a desire to speak to some one, and I approached him and asked in French if he could tell me the time. He answered me civilly, and by his accent I perceived that he was a German, one of the artists no doubt who are here so numerous, although I did not remember having seen him before. He was extremely handsome--I should say between thirty and forty--and though his face was young, his eyes had a penetrating sadness about them, an almost tragic expression, as though they had sounded bitter depths of experience. We fell into conversation, and he told me that he was a German, that his name was Müller, and that he was spending some months in Rome. I said that I presumed he was an artist; he replied that he was only now learning the rudiments of the art of drawing, but that he had begun too late, and that he would never be anything but a dilettante.