The wide circus before St. Peter's Church was solitary and dumb as the saints upon the columns; the fountains spoke: one constellation more went out above the obelisk. They went up by the winding stairway of a hundred and fifty steps to the roof of the church, and came out through a street of houses, columns, little cupolas and towers, through four doors into the monstrous dome,--into a vaulted night. In the depths below the temple rested, like a broad, gloomy, lonesome valley with houses and trees, a holy abyss, and they walked along close by the mosaic-giants, the broad colored clouds on the heaven of the dome. While they were ascending in the high vault, Aurora's golden foam glistened redder and redder on the windows, and fire and night swam into each other among the arches. They hastened yet higher and looked out, just as a single living ray darted upon the world, as out of an eye, from behind the mountains; around the old Alban mountain smoked a hundred glowing clouds, as if his cold crater was again bringing forth a flame-day, and the eagles with golden wings baptized in the sun flew slowly along over the clouds. All at once the sun-god stood upon the fair ridge; he stood erect in heaven, and rent away the network of night from the covered earth; then burned the Obelisks and the Colosseum and Rome from hill to hill, and on the solitary Campagna sparkled in manifold windings the yellow giant snake of the world, the Tiber,--all clouds dissipated themselves into the depths of heaven, and golden light ran from Tusculum and from Tivoli, and from the vine-hills into the many-colored plains, over the scattered villas and cottages, into the citron and oak groves; low in the far west the sea was again as at evening, when the hot god visits it, full of splendor, ever kindled by him, and became his eternal dew.[86] In the morning world below lay far and wide the great, still Rome,--no living city, a solitary, enormous, enchanted garden of the old, hidden, heroic spirits, laid out on twelve hills. The unpeopled pleasure-garden of spirits announced itself by its green meadows and cypresses between palaces, and by its broad, open stairways and columns and bridges, by its ruins and high fountains and garden of Adonis, and its green mountains and temples of the gods; the broad city avenues had passed away; the windows were barred up; on the roofs the stony dead looked steadfastly at each other; only the glistening fountain waters were awake and alive and active, and a single nightingale sighed, as if she would die at last. "That is great," said Albano, at length, "that all is solitary down below and one sees no present. The old heroic spirits can pursue their existence in the vast vacuity, and march through their old arches and temples and play, up on the columns, with the ivy." "Nothing," replied the Princess, "is wanting to the magnificence but this dome, which from the Capitol we might in fact see besides. But never shall I forget this spot."