We climbed and climbed, with many a muted hope and
many a muted fear of the mechanism which carried us
so safely, and then we ran across a stretch of comparative
level and reached the last station, under the cliff
on which the local hotel stood, with the mighty ruin
behind it. Our passengers flocked up to the terrace
of the hotel, much shoved and shouldered by automobiles
bearing the company which seems proper to those vehicles,
and dispersed themselves at the many little tables
set about for tea, and the glory of the matchless
outlook. While one could yet have the ruin mostly
to one’s self, it seemed the most favorable
moment to visit the crumbling walls and broken tower,
whose fragments strewed the slopes around. The
tower was of Augustus, and the fortress into which
it was turned in the Middle Ages was of unknown authority,
but the ruin was the work of Marshal Villars, who blew
up both trophy and stronghold sometime in the French
king’s wars with the imperialists in the first
half of the eighteenth century. The destruction
was incomplete, though probably sufficient for the
purpose, but as a ruin, nothing could be more admirable.
There seems to be at present something like a restoration
going on; it has not gone very far, however; it has
developed some fragments of majestic pillars, and some
breadths of Roman brick-work; a few spaces about the
base of the tower are cleared; but the rehabilitation
will probably never proceed to such an extreme that
you may not sit down on some carven remnant of the
past, and closing your eyes to the surrounding glory
of alp and sea find yourself again on the Palatine
or amid the memorials of the Forum.
THE END
Copyrights
Roman Holidays, and Others from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
