The pontificate of Gregory XIII was a deplorable one for the Holy See and for the Romans. Conditions of living sank to a very low level. Banditti terrorized the States of the Church and could not be controlled even in Rome. The great families whose estates Gregory had confiscated to pay for his architectural and ecclesiastical extravagances were in open revolt, and the treasury was empty. Venice had been estranged, and England and the Netherlands were forever lost. Gregory XIII’s successor, Sixtus V, fell heir to this condition of misrule and disaster. No one can be surprised at the grim irony of the new pontiff in ordering masses to be said for the soul of Gregory XIII! Looking at the tranquil loveliness of the Colonna fountain--so white and shining in the sunlight--it is difficult to picture it as a part of the turbulent life of the period in which it was erected. Yet many a time its waters must have restored consciousness, stanched wounds, stifled cries for mercy or succor, and washed away the stains of blood. It has always been a Pilgrims’ Fountain. Long before Sixtus V with his passion for converting the “high places” of Paganism into Christian monuments had restored the Antonine column and placed upon it the statue of St. Paul--long before that time the ascent of the column had been a part of the Roman pilgrims’ itinerary. In the Middle Ages the column had become the property of the monks of San Silvestro, who leased it to the highest bidder. As Rome numbered her pilgrims by the thousands in any year, and by the tens of thousands during the years of the Papal Jubilee, a goodly profit was derived from the fees paid by the pilgrims to the custodian of the column, and the monks could therefore always count upon making an advantageous lease. Gregory XIII, in erecting this fountain, must have thought primarily of the comfort and interest of the pilgrims. As the traveller of to-day remembers the fountain of Trevi, so the pilgrim of the sixteenth century remembered the fountain by the side of the Column of St. Paul--the fountain of the Piazza Colonna. Its beauty delighted the eyes of footsore men from far-off and still barbarous countries; while the crystalline waters which quenched their thirst and washed away the stains of travel would have had for these Christians from the North a symbolic significance undreamed of by the Romans. The vision of this shining fountain has been carried back to many distant monasteries and remote firesides throughout the Christian world. Its situation in the Piazza Colonna, which is but a widening of the Corso, has kept it in the main current of Roman life. The people use it and cherish it; Falda has engraved it; and, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, Pope Leo XII embellished it with its dainty shells and dolphins, as a father might twine flowers in the hair of some beautiful child. QUATTRO FONTANE [Illustration] QUATTRO FONTANE