This bit of wall runs northwest and southeast on the eastern slope of the hill, and within the walls of Pope Urban VIII. At its northern end it is at about an equal distance from the Fontanone and the Porta San Pancrazio. When this defense broke down, the French troops entered the city through a breach in the Urban walls to the southwest of the fountain. The narrow lane leading from this point to Porta San Pancrazio was soon choked with the dead and dying. The Italians and French fought hand to hand in the darkness, along the road in front of the Villa Aurelia, that road which is to-day so quiet and so clean! During the previous eight days bursting shells from the French batteries erected on the walls and near the Villa Corsini and the Convent of San Pancrazio had wrought far-reaching havoc. The Church of San Pietro in Montorio was used by Garibaldi as a hospital, but its roof had collapsed, and on the slopes above it all the great villas were in ruins. To the northwest of the fountain, just above the Porta San Pancrazio, the Villa Savorelli (now the Villa Aurelia and the present home of the American Academy) stood up against the sky, a mere shell of blackened walls. Outside the porta, the Vascello lay in masses of crumbled masonry, although Medici still held it for Garibaldi. Farther up the hill, over the spot now occupied by the triumphal arch, towered the remains of the magnificent Villa Corsini; before it the body of Masina, still lying where the young lancer had fallen after his last wild charge up the villa steps. Amid the general devastation the Fontanone stood unscathed. Its splendid stream of water flowed unpolluted, and it fulfilled the noblest functions of a fountain during the heat and carnage of that Roman June. To those who are familiar with the story of the heroic “Defense” a visit to Paul V’s great fountain on the Janiculum is not a bit of sight-seeing--it has become a pilgrimage. MONTE CAVALLO [Illustration] MONTE CAVALLO The fountain of the Monte Cavallo is overshadowed both literally and figuratively by the size and importance of the objects which surround it. Without it the obelisk, which forms its background, and the great groups of the Dioscuri, which flank it on either side, would be sufficiently imposing and significant, either separately or together, to form the central decoration of the Piazza of Monte Cavallo, or of any piazza in any city; but the fountain is not entirely superfluous. Its magnificent jet of water, thrown upward between the heads of the rearing horses and swept hither and thither at the will of the wind, binds together the otherwise disjointed and inharmonious group.