Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 2).djvu/131

Rh Ostia, and Graeta, as on those of Corsica, Tuscany, and Spain; and as he himself, as well as Franz could remember, had spoken both of Tunis and Palermo, there was a further proof thereby how largely his circle of acquaintances extended.

But however the mind of the young man might be absorbed in these reflections, they were at once dispersed at the sight of the dark, gigantic specter of the Colosseum, through the various openings of which the pale moonlight nickered like the gleam from the eyes of phantoms. The carriage stopped near the Meta Sudans, the door was opened, and the young men, eagerly alighting, found themselves opposite a cicerone, who appeared to have sprung up from the ground.

The usual guide from the hotel having followed them, they thus had two conductors; nor is it possible, at Rome, to avoid this abundant supply of guides; besides the ordinary cicerone who seizes upon you directly you set foot in your hotel, and never quits you while you remain in the city, there is also a special cicerone belonging to each monument nay, almost to each part of a monument. It may, therefore, be easily imagined there is no scarcity of guides at the Colosseum, that wonder of all ages, which Martial thus eulogizes:

"Let Memphis cease to boast the barbarous miracles of her pyramids, nor the wonders of Babylon be talked of among us; all must bow to the superiority of the gigantic labor of the Csesars, and the many voices of Fame spread far and wide the surpassing merits of this incomparable monument."

As for Albert and Franz, they essayed not to escape from the tyranny of the ciceroni; and, indeed, it would have been so much the more difficult, as the guides alone are permitted to visit these monuments with torches in their hands. Thus, then, the young men made no attempt at resistance, but blindly surrendered themselves to their conductors.

Franz had already made seven or eight similar excursions to the Colosseum, while his less-favored companion trod for the first time in his life the classic ground forming the monument of Flavius Vespasian, and, to his credit be it spoken, his mind, even amid the glib loquacity of the guides, was deeply touched. Certainly no one can have any notion without having seen them of the majesty of such a ruin whose vast proportions appear twice as large when viewed by the mysterious beams of a southern moon, whose rays equal the twilight of the west.

Scarcely, therefore, had the reflective Franz walked a hundred steps beneath the interior porticos of the ruin, than, abandoning Albert to the guides, who would by no means yield their prescriptive right carrying their victims through the routine of the "Lion's Den," the