The third fountain in the trio of the Campidoglio is to be found in the upper garden of the Palazzo dei Conservatori--the building to the right hand in the ascent of the Cordonata. It can hardly be called a fountain, since it is merely a large basin of water surrounding some rockwork on which stands an old bit of sculpture of a character manifestly inappropriate to the sentiment of a fountain. It represents a lion tearing out the vitals of a horse which it has sprung upon and borne to the ground. This much-restored fragment is of real importance from an artistic standpoint, while as a Roman antiquity it has extraordinary interest. The marble bears distinct traces of having been subjected to the action of water, and, as a matter of fact, it was found more than a thousand years ago in the bed of the River Almo. Nothing is known of its history previous to that discovery. [Illustration] The Almo is a little brook in the Campagna not far from Rome, rising in the hills between the Via Appia and Via Latina and emptying into the Tiber. Its modern name is Acquataccio. The Almo was connected with the ancient worship of the goddess Cybele, whose sacred image was ceremonially washed in it each year on the 27th of March by the priests. This religious ceremony, doubtless, preserved the channel of the stream so that it would have been quite possible to hide successfully a great piece of statuary in its depths or in some reedy pool along its banks. River-beds were not uncommon hiding-places for treasures during the Dark Ages which followed the breaking-up of the Roman Empire, and it is quite possible that this group may have been so hidden by its owner whose great villa, situated near the stream, was threatened with pillage or destruction by some barbarian incursion. The high value evidently placed upon it by its original possessor was also given to it by its discoverers. It belonged to that remote museum of antiquities kept in or near the Lateran Palace during the Middle Ages and dating back at least to the days when Charlemagne first visited Rome, in 781, bringing with him his little son Pepin, aged four, to be anointed King of Italy by Pope Hadrian I. This museum contained also the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, now standing in the centre of the piazza of the Campidoglio, together with the two river-gods, placed later on by Michelangelo where they now lie--one on either side of the central fountain of the Campidoglio; and other marbles and bronzes of great value. Most of these art treasures were removed from the Lateran to the Capitol when Pope Sixtus IV (Riario, 1471–1484) founded the Capitoline Museum; but long before that time the Lion, as it was always called (the original portion of the horse being merely the body), had been taken from its academic seclusion and set in the midst of things. During three centuries of the turbulent life of mediæval Rome, it stood to the left hand and at the foot of the long flight of steps