Roderick went to work and spent a month shut up in his studio; he had an idea, and he was not to rest till he had embodied it.

He had established himself in the basement of a huge, dusky, dilapidated old house, in that long, tortuous, and preeminently Roman street which leads from the Corso to the Bridge of St.Angelo.The black archway which admitted you might have served as the portal of the Augean stables, but you emerged presently upon a mouldy little court, of which the fourth side was formed by a narrow terrace, overhanging the Tiber.

Here, along the parapet, were stationed half a dozen shapeless fragments of sculpture, with a couple of meagre orange-trees in terra-cotta tubs, and an oleander that never flowered.

The unclean, historic river swept beneath; behind were dusky, reeking walls, spotted here and there with hanging rags and flower-pots in windows; opposite, at a distance, were the bare brown banks of the stream, the huge rotunda of St.Angelo, tipped with its seraphic statue, the dome of St.Peter's, and the broad-topped pines of the Villa Doria.

The place was crumbling and shabby and melancholy, but the river was delightful, the rent was a trifle, and everything was picturesque.