"It doesn't pretend to, young patriot. I simply brought you here to do as the Romans do fine afternoons. Some day you'll drive on the Pincian at the fashionable hour, and after that I'd like to hear your American comparisons."
"But where in the world can you find a street short as Il Corso with more associations with great men? Over there's the house where Shelley wrote 'The Cenci,' and Goethe's home in Rome is not far away. A little off at one side you'll find Donizetti's house, and on the other Sir Walter Scott's, and just ahead of us is the Bonaparte Palace, where Madame Letitia spent her sad later years. You hardly have to turn out of your way to find the remains of old temples, and there in the Piazza is the Marcus Aurelius Column."
"Oh, it's inter—," but with the word unfinished, Marion put his hand to his hat as if to bow to some one in a passing carriage. He did not really bow, however, and the others noticed that he reddened deeply.
"That looked like the fairy godfather!" cried Irma.
"Whom I consider a myth," responded Uncle Jim.
But Marion said nothing.
Irma's first week in Rome seemed to pass almost as quickly as her first day. Though she had been sightseeing constantly, she still had not seen the Colosseum, the Forum, or the Vatican treasures. Each day was not long enough. In the morning she usually visited some gallery with her aunt. But in the warmer hours, from twelve to three, they rested. Some object of interest and a drive took the later afternoon, and by evening all were too tired to do anything but sit about and compare experiences with one another or with their hotel acquaintances.
"I haven't forgotten your advice," wrote Irma in a long letter to her mother, "to remember clearly at least one or two things from each gallery. In the Borghese there is Canova's beautiful statue of Pauline, Napoleon's sister, and Titian's Holy and Profane Love, and in the Colonna that enormous ceiling painting—I almost broke my neck looking up at it—of the Battle of Lepanto, where some Prince Colonna fought, and some wonderful ivory carvings, one of them, in a few square inches, shows all the figures of Michelangelo's Last Judgment. Then in the Doria is Velasquez' Pope Julius X, in his red robes, and some Claude Lorraines that I liked.