I raised my eyes.
What was the blur of black on the edge of the night sky? Were these the lofty arches of an immense bridge? What river did it span? Why was it broken down in parts? No, it was not a bridge, it was an ancient aqueduct. All around was the holy ground of the Campagna, and there, in the distance, the Albanian hills, and their peaks and the grey ridge of the old aqueduct gleamed dimly in the beams of the rising moon....
We suddenly darted upwards, and floated in the air before a deserted ruin. No one could have said what it had been: sepulchre, palace, or castle.... Dark ivy encircled it all over in its deadly clasp, and below gaped yawning a half-ruined vault. A heavy underground smell rose in my face from this heap of tiny closely-fitted stones, whence the granite facing of the wall had long crumbled away.
‘Here,’ Alice pronounced, and she raised her hand: ‘Here! call aloud three times running the name of the mighty Roman!’
‘What will happen?’
‘You will see.’
I wondered. ‘Divus Caius Julius Caesar!’ I cried suddenly; ‘Divus Caius Julius Caesar!’ I repeated deliberately; ‘Caesar!’
XIII
The last echoes of my voice had hardly died away, when I heard....
It is difficult to say what I did hear. At first there reached me a confused din the ear could scarcely catch, the endlessly-repeated clamour of the blare of trumpets, and the clapping of hands. It seemed that somewhere, immensely far away, at some fathomless depth, a multitude innumerable was suddenly astir, and was rising up, rising up in agitation, calling to one another, faintly, as if muffled in sleep, the suffocating sleep of ages. Then the air began moving in dark currents over the ruin.... Shades began flitting before me, myriads of shades, millions of outlines, the rounded curves of helmets, the long straight lines of lances; the moonbeams were broken into momentary gleams of blue upon these helmets and lances, and all this army, this multitude, came closer and closer, and grew, in more and more rapid movement.... An indescribable force, a force fit to set the whole world moving, could be felt in it; but not one figure stood out clearly.... And suddenly I fancied a sort of tremor ran all round, as if it were the rush and rolling apart of some huge waves.... ‘Caesar, Caesar venit!’ sounded voices, like the leaves of a forest when a storm has suddenly broken upon it ... a muffled shout thundered through the multitude, and a pale stern head, in a wreath of laurel, with downcast eyelids, the head of the emperor, began slowly to rise out of the ruin....