‘Do you drive?’ he asked, ‘or may I escort you to the house?’ ‘I will walk if you will walk with me,’ replied Minna; and in a minute or two she had locked the door behind her, and they were going downstairs. It was a mild and beautiful night, and they went slowly along the lighted streets and glittering _piazze_ towards Casa Dietrich. Rome was awake and alive, as she always begins to be about that hour. It is true, the turmoil never ceases for a moment throughout the day; but it is at night that the particularly vivid, eager life starts up, that crowds most do throng the streets, and pour in and out of the cafés, the faces gleam keener, and wit flows more freely, and gesticulation is more animated, and the cries are shriller of those who call newspapers and matches and sermons of fashionable preachers, and sponges and crockery, and miscellaneous toys and goods of every description, as well as the thousand other things which are hawked through Roman streets by stentorian Roman lungs. Ever more piercing, ever more confounding to a sensitive set of nerves, ever more delightful and inspiring, do they grow to this wondrous race, which, while brimming over with life and eagerness and nervous force, yet seem to be sublimely ignorant of the existence of nerves in the sense of having them to be pained and wearied. It is unknown how many hours of sleep the average Roman extracts from the twenty-four, but probably fewer than the inhabitants of any other place in the world. Minna knew the turmoil, the tumult, and the excitement, and loved them. They came to her ever fresh, ever interesting, ever inspiring. She loved them alike in these winter nights, in the spring evenings, and late in summer nights, when the mighty world-city with its great mystery had been during the burning hours of the day quelled into silence, but at night rose up, and, as it were, adorned herself and said, ‘I will go forth and wander in my gardens, and sit in my places of entertainment, and rest beside my fountains, and listen to the mirth of my children, for life is good.’ She loved it all, and loved to be in it. And as she and Signor Giuseppe paced slowly along on their way from her studio to the house, she tried to explain to him some of this feeling that she had, and some of the emotions which the spectacle of this mighty and throbbing life roused in her.