The brothers made the blunder of supposing that Regina could walk as far as they. They dragged her on to the Forum, where, her eyes blinded by fatigue, she saw no more than a field of drenched ruins, a sorrow-stricken place, a cemetery over which the metallic clouds brooded, hiding the blue heaven and wrapping arches and columns in veils of doleful shade. Gaspare discoursed learnedly, but she did not listen. The tragic solitude of the vast graveyard was profaned by a great number of persons with eye-glasses and English gowns girded up with pins and dress-fasteners. The columns and the glorious fragments, still soaked with rain, seemed to Regina gigantic marble bones, exhumed by a nation of inquisitive children who amused themselves desecrating this stupendous sepulchre of a dead civilisation. From the Forum they moved homewards towards Piazza Venezia. It was almost noon; the crowds took the trams by assault; a broad river of smartly-dressed women came down Via Nazionale, spread over the Piazza, and went up the Corso. A confused noise of trams, motors, carriages, human voices, sounded on the air which was still damp, but illuminated by changing light from between the clouds. Regina felt a kind of vertigo. She, who could see little that was distant, began to see even the near things confusedly. The incessant rumble of a thousand noises, among which the motors emitted roars like rampant wild beasts, gave her a vague sensation of terror. She fixed her wide eyes on the crowd, fascinated by the coming and going as by the flowing of a stream. She looked up and saw a network of telephone wires hiding the sky, which renewed her feeling of oppression; and yet, though tired and overwhelmed, she would not admit herself wondering or surprised. The elegance of the women certainly struck her. She felt envious, but also displeased. It was impossible there could be so many shapely and handsome women! They must be painted and padded! Oh, she knew very well! She knew how much corruption, falsity, hidden misery, that crowd carried within itself, the first contact with which on that uncertain autumn morning under the network of metallic threads awoke in her a mysterious sentiment of aversion and pity. Antonio fixed enamoured eyes on his bride's face; but those enamoured eyes failed to perceive the apathy of fatigue which was showing more and more plainly on the beloved features. "Let's take a carriage," he suggested. "Why not the tram?" asked Gaspare. Antonio said the carriage would be quicker, but really he wanted at least for the first day to treat his Regina royally. Gaspare argued for the tram. "Let's walk," said Regina. "Walk? When we can't get you along?" exclaimed the brother-in-law. "Then we'll have the carriage," said Regina to spite him. "Oh, I see! We've become aristocrats!" said the misogynist.