“From Pognembin,” answered Svirski, frowning slightly.
The end of the dinner interrupted further explanations and converse. Marynia could scarcely sit still at the thought that she would see the Capitol, the Forum, and the Colosseum by moonlight. In fact, somewhat later they were driving toward the ruins along the Corso, which was lighted by electricity.
The night was calm and warm. Around the Forum and Colosseum the place was completely deserted; as, for that matter, it is in the day sometimes. Near the church of Santa Maria Liberatrice some person in an open window was playing on a flute, and one could hear every note in the stillness. On the front of the Forum a deep shadow fell from the height of the Capitol and its edifices; but farther on it was flooded with clear, greenish light, as was also the Colosseum, which seemed silver. When the carriage halted at the arches of the gigantic circus, Pan Stanislav, Svirski, and Vaskovski entered the interior, and pushed toward the centre of the arena, avoiding the fragments of columns, friezes, piles of bricks, stones, and bases of columns standing here and there, and fragments piled up near the arches. Under the influence of silence and loneliness, words did not rise to their lips. Through the arched entrances came to the interior sheaves of moonlight, which seemed to rest quietly on the floor of the arena, on the opposite walls, on the indentations, on openings in the walls, on breaks, on the silvered mosses and ivy, covering the ruin here and there. Other parts of the building, sunk in impenetrable darkness, produced the impression of black and mysterious gulleys. From the low-placed cunicula came the stern breath of desolation. Reality was lost amidst that labyrinth and confusion of walls, arches, bright spots, bright stripes, and deep shadows. The colossal ruin seemed to lose its real existence, and to become a dream vision, or rather, a kind of wonderful impression composed of silence, night, the moon, sadness, and the remembrance of a past, mighty, but full of blood and suffering.
Svirski began to speak first, and in a subdued voice,—
“What pain, what tears, were here! what a measureless tragedy! Let people say what they please, there is something beyond human in Christianity; and that thought cannot be avoided.”
Here he turned to Marynia, and continued,—
“Imagine that might: a whole world, millions of people, iron laws, power unequalled before or since, an organization such as has never been elsewhere, greatness, glory, hundreds of legions, a gigantic city, possessing the world,—and that Palatine hill over there, possessing the city; it would seem that no earthly power could overturn it. Meanwhile two Jews come,—Peter and Paul, not with arms, but a word; and see, here is a ruin, on the Palatine a ruin, in the Forum a ruin, and above the city crosses, crosses, crosses and crosses.”
Again there was silence; but from the direction of Santa Maria Liberatrice the sound of the flute came continually.
After a while Vaskovski said, pointing to the arena,—
“There was a cross here, too, but they have borne it away.”