The landau that the Breton family was in took the Appian, Way, and
Cæsar and Don Calixto’s carriage followed behind it.
They passed the tomb of Cecilia Metella, and were able to look ahead
along the old road, on whose sides one sees the remains of aqueducts,
which at evening-fall have a grandeur so imposing. Don Calixto and Don
Justo were discussing a question of home politics.
On them magnificently indifferent, the broken sepulchres, the abandoned
arches invaded by grass, the vestiges of a gigantic civilization, did
not produce the least impression.
The coachman pointed out Frascati on the slope of a mountain, Albano,
Grotta Ferrata, and Tivoli.
Cæsar felt the grandeur of the landscape; the enormous sadness of the
remnants of aqueducts, which had the colour of rusty iron, beneath a sky
of pink clouds.
At dusk they turned back. Cæsar felt a weight on his spirits. The
walls of the Baths of Caracalla looked threatening to him. Those great
towering thick walls, broken, brick-colour, burned by the sun, gave
him an impression of the strength of the past. There were no trees, no
houses near them; as if those imposing ruins precluded any life round
about. Only one humble almond-tree held out its white flowers.
Don Calixto and the Canon continued chatting.