This
Did Not Prevent His Touching His Hat To Each Of Us In Parting, And
Assuring Us That He Revered Us; A Thing That Only Old-Fashioned Romans
Seem To Do Nowadays, In The Supposed Decay Of Manners Which The
Comfortable Classes Everywhere Like To Note In The Uncomfortable.
Then
some ladies of our number went off on a platform across the house-tops
to which the elevator
Had brought us, as if they expected to go down the
chimneys to their apartments; and the rest of us expanded into the
Piazza Trinita de' Monti; and I stopped to lounge against the uppermost
balustrade of the Spanish Steps.
It is notable, but not surprising, how soon one forms the habit of this,
for, seen from above, the Spanish Steps are only less enchanting than
the Spanish Steps seen from below, whence they are absolutely the most
charming sight in the world. The reader, if he has nothing better than a
post-card (which I could have bought him on the spot for fifty a franc),
knows how the successive stairways part and flow downward to right and
left, like the parted waters of a cascade, and lose themselves at the
bottom in banks of flowers. No lovelier architectural effect was ever
realized from a happy fancy; but, of course, the pictorial effect is
richer from below, especially from the Via dei Condotti, where it opens
into the Piazza di Spagna. I suppose there must be hours of the day, and
certainly there are hours of the night, when in this prospect the Steps
have not the sunset on them.
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