He decided to rid himself of the fellow as soon as the goatherd had served his purpose, for this verminous piety was like the drawing of a dirty clout across the fresh flavor of a May morning. Where four roads crossed, they parted, and Francesco, cantering along the high-road, little guessed that the wary duke had assigned to him this especial guide to disgust him with his own garb and calling. CHAPTER VII ROME! The chimes of the Angelus were borne to him on the soft breeze of evening, when, on the third day of his journey, Francesco caught sight of the walls and towers of Rome. As he drew rein on the crest of a low hill, the desolate brown wastes of the Campagna stretched before him, mile upon mile to northward, towards the impenetrable forests of Viterbo. Before him rose the huge half-ruined wall of Aurelian, battered by Goth and Saracen and imperial Greek; before him towered the fortress-tomb of the former master of the world, vast and impregnable. Here and there above the broken crenelations of the city's battlements rose dark and massive towers, square and round, marking the fortified mansions of the Roman nobles. In the evening light the towers seemed encircled as by a halo. The machicolated heights, the encircling ramparts, the stern tomb of the Emperor Hadrian rose proudly impregnable into the golden air of evening, a massive witness to the power of a Church, literally militant here below. Under the broad Aelian bridge, built centuries ago, rolled the turbid waves of the Tiber, and upon the bridge itself a stream of humanity, hardly less intermittent, was moving. Francesco, having buried his sword and shield under a grass-grown ruin beyond the city walls, rode dazed and wondering into the sun-kissed splendors of pontifical Rome. Gradually the sun sank, the valley of the Tiber filled with golden lights, moving along little by little, travelling slowly up the emerald hillocks, covering the bluish mountains of Alba with a golden flush, crowning the thousand churches and palaces with a rosy sheen, then dying away into the pale, amber horizon, rosy where it touched the distant hills, bluish where it merged imperceptibly with the upper sky. Bluer and bluer became the hills, deeper and deeper that first faint amber. The valleys were filled with gray-blue mist, against which the Seven Hills stood out dark, cold and massive. There was a sudden stillness, as when the last chords of a great symphony have died away. The yellow waters of the Tiber eddied sullen and mournful round the ship-shaped island, along by Vesta's temple, beneath the cypressed Aventine. After having secured temporary lodging at a tavern bearing the sign of the Mermaid, over against the tower of Nona, near the bridge of San Angelo, Francesco wandered out into the streets of Rome.