And, as he wandered along the Appian Way, past the site of lava pools from Mount Alba, remains of ancient monuments lay thicker by the roadside. Prostrate statues appeared in a setting of wild flowers. Sculptured heads gazed out from half-hidden tombs, while one watch-tower after another rose out of the undulating expanse of the Campagna. To Tristan the memories of an ancient empire which clung to the place held but little significance. Here emperors had been carried by in their litters to Albano. Victorious generals returning in their chariots from the south, drove between these avenues of cypress-guarded tombs to Rome. The body of the dead Augustus had been brought with great following from Bovilæ to the Palatine, as before him Sulla had been borne along to Rome amid the sound of trumpets and tramp of horsemen. Near the fourth milestone stood Seneca's villa, where he received his death warrant from an emissary of Nero, and nearby was that of his wife who, by her own desire, bravely shared his fate. And, last to haunt the Appian Way in the spirit pageant of the Golden Age, a memory destined to lie dormant till the dawn of the Renaissance, was Paul the Apostle, the tent-maker from Tarsus, who entered Rome while Nero reigned in the white marble city of Augustus and suffered martyrdom for the Faith. It was verging towards evening when Tristan's feet again bore him past the stupendous ruins of the Colosseum, through the roofless upper galleries of which streamed the light of the sinking sun. After reaching the Forum, almost deserted by this hour, save for a few belated ramblers, he seated himself on a marble block and tried to collect his thoughts, at the same time drinking in the picture which unrolled itself before his gaze. If Rome was indeed, as the chroniclers of the Middle Ages styled her, "Caput Mundi," the Forum was the centre of Rome. From this centre Rome threw out and informed her various feelers, farther and farther radiating in all directions, as she swelled out with greatness, drawing her sustenance first from her sacred hills and groves, then from the very marbles and granites of the mountains of Asia and Africa, from the lives of all sorts of peoples, races and nations. And like the Emperor Constantine, as we are told by Ammianus Marcellinus, on beholding the Forum from the Rostra of Domitian, stood wonder-stricken, so Tristan, even at this period of decay, was amazed at the grandeur of the ruins which bore witness to Rome's former greatness. The sound of the Angelus, whose silvery chimes permeated the tomb-like stillness, roused Tristan from his reveries. He arose and continued upon his way, until he found himself in the square fronting the ancient Basilica of Constantine.