But whichever way they turned dusty
roads too confronted them, illimitable stretches of gloomy suburb,
unwholesome airs, sickening sights and sounds and perfumes. Narrow
streets swept, darkling, under pointed archways, that framed
distant vistas of spire or campanile, silhouetted against the solid
blue sky of Italy. The crystal hardness of that sapphire firmament
repelled Herminia. They passed beneath the triumphal arch of
Augustus with its Etruscan mason-work, its Roman decorations, and
round the antique walls, aglow with tufted gillyflowers, to the
bare Piazza d'Armi. A cattle fair was going on there; and Alan
pointed with pleasure to the curious fact that the oxen were all
cream-colored,--the famous white steers of Clitumnus. Herminia
knew her Virgil as well as Alan himself, and murmured half aloud
the sonorous hexameter, "Romanos ad templa deum duxere triumphos."
But somehow, the knowledge that these were indeed the milk-white
bullocks of Clitumnus failed amid so much dust to arouse her
enthusiasm. She would have been better pleased just then with a
yellow English primrose.
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