We were stopped the moment we had entered the gate, and desired to mount to the guard-room. In a small chamber on the city-wall, seated at a table, on which a lamp was burning, we found a little tight-made brusque French officer, busied in overhauling the passports. Declaring himself satisfied after a slight survey, he hinted pretty plainly that a few pauls would be acceptable. "Did you ever," whispered my Russian friend, "see such a people?" We were remounting our vehicle, when a soldier climbed up, with musket and fixed bayonet, and forced himself in between my companion and myself, to see us all right to the custom-house, and to take care that we dropped no counterband goods by the way. Away we trundled; but the Campagna itself was not more solitary than that rain-battered and half-flooded street. No ray streamed out from window; no sound or voice of man broke the stillness; no one was abroad; the wind moaned; and the big drops fell heavily upon the plashy lava-paved causeway; but, with these exceptions, the silence was unbroken; and, to add to the dreariness, the city was in well-nigh total darkness. I intently scrutinized the various objects, as the glare of our lamps brought them successively into view. First there came a range of massive columns, which stalked past us, wearing in the sombre night an air of Egyptian grandeur. They came on and on, and I thought they should never have passed. Little did I dream that this was the piazza of St Peter's, and that the bulb I had seen by favour of the lightning was the dome of that renowned edifice. Next we found ourselves in a street of low, mean, mouldering houses; and in a few moments thereafter we were riding under the walls of an immense fortress, which rose above us, till its battlements were lost in the darkness. Then turning at right angles, we crossed a long bridge, with shade-like statues looking down upon us from either parapet, and a dark silent river flowing underneath. I could guess what river that was. We then plunged into a labyrinth of streets of a rather better description than the one already traversed, but equally dreary and deserted. We kept winding and turning, till, as I supposed, we had got to the heart of the city. In all that way we had not met a human being, or seen aught from which we could infer that there was a living creature in Rome. At last we found ourselves in a small square,--the site of the Forum of Antoninus, though I knew it not then,--in one of the sides of which was an iron gate, which opened to receive us, _diligence_ and all, and which was instantly closed and locked behind us; while two soldiers, with fixed bayonets, took their stand as sentinels outside. It was a vast barn-looking, cavern-like place, with mouldering Corinthian columns built into its massive wall, and its roof hung so high as to be scarce visible in the darkness. It had been a temple of Antoninus Pius, and was now converted into the Pope's dogana or custom-house.