On one side was the great height of the palace, with the moonshine falling over it, and showing all the windows barred and shuttered.

Not a human eye could look down into the little courtyard, even if the seemingly deserted palace had a tenant.

On all other sides of its narrow compass there was nothing but the parapet, which as it now appeared was built right on the edge of a steep precipice.

Gazing from its imminent brow, the party beheld a crowded confusion of roofs spreading over the whole space between them and the line of hills that lay beyond the Tiber.

A long, misty wreath, just dense enough to catch a little of the moonshine, floated above the houses, midway towards the hilly line, and showed the course of the unseen river.