He could remember when Rome had furnished some excellent company for the House, and suffered in the places of renown an indeterminable pang like the ache of an amputated stump.

It seemed, on occasion, as if the old trails might lie down the hollow of the Forum, under the arch of that broken aqueduct, beside the dark Volsinian mere; but when Peter arrived at any of these places he found them prepossessed by Germans gabbling out of _Baedekers_.

The Sistine Chapel made the back of his neck ache and he came no nearer than seven tourists to the noble quietude of the Vatican can marbles.
"I must remember," said Peter to himself, "that I am a very sick man, and crowds annoy me." Then he went into the country and saw the gray of the olives above the springing grass, like the silver bloom on a green plum, and began to experience the pangs of recovery.

He found Hadrian's Villa and the garden of the Villa d'Este, and remembered other things.

He remembered the flat malachite-coloured pools, the definite, pointed cypresses and the fountain's soft incessant rain--as it had been in the House.