He began to attend the University lectures, studying Civil and Penal Law under Ferri. Here again his ideas were upset. The students were entirely noisy; laughing at and mocking everybody and everything. In Hall IV., while they were waiting for Ferri, the row and the joking passed all limits of decorum. One student would leap upon the chair and deliver a parody of the expected lecture. His fellows shouted, hissed, applauded, cried, "Viva il Papa!" "Viva St Alphonso di Liguri!" "Viva Pio Nono!" Sometimes the student in the chair, with red, set face, would mimic the mewing of cats, the crowing of cocks. Then the roaring and the hissing redoubled. Paper balls were thrown and lighted matches; the student persisted till the arrival of the professor, who was received with thunders of applause.
Later Anania took part in this noise and tumult, but at first the absurdity, the scepticism, the vanity and egotism of his companions shocked him. He felt more than ever alone, unlike the rest, and he repented that he had come to Rome. But one evening he and Daga were crossing Via Nazionale at the fall of evening. The pavements were deserted, the radiance of the electric lamps was lost in the azure dusk. The windows of the banks were brightly illuminated.
"Look!" said Daga.
"It seems as if all the gold in the Bank was shining at the windows!" cried Anania.
"Bravo!" said the other, "you're getting quite brilliant in my society!"
Presently they stopped again. On the left, in the indescribable depth of Via Quattro Fontane, the sky burned with violet clearness; on the right the full moon was rising from the black outline of Santa Maria Maggiore which was silhouetted against a silver background.
"Let's go to the Coliseum!" said Anania.
They went, and spent a long time wandering round the divine mystery of the spot, looking at the moon through every arch. Then they sat on a shining column, and Daga said—
"I feel as if I were in the moon. Don't you think that in the moon one would feel just as one feels here in this great dead world?"
"Yes," said Anania, answering his own inward question, "this is Rome!"