Dicky reformed it, but with an air of patience under persecution which I found hard to bear.  “I don’t know your authority for calling it unrequited,” he said, with dignity.

“All right—­undelivered,” I replied.  “That is a noble statue—­you can’t contradict the guide-book.  By Borghi.”

“Victor Emmanuel, is it?  Then it isn’t Garibaldi.  You don’t have to travel much in Italy to know it’s got to be either one or the other.  What they like is to have both,” said Mr. Dod, with unnecessary bitterness.  “I’d enjoy something fresh in statues myself.”  Then, with an imperfectly-concealed alertness, “There seems to be something going on over there,” he added.

We could see nothing but an arched door in a high, curving wall, and a stream of people trickling in.  “Probably only one of their eternal Latin church services,” continued Dicky.  “It’s about the only form of public entertainment you can depend on in this country.  But we might as well have a look in.”  He went on to say, as we crossed the dusty road, that my unsympathetic attitude was enough to drive anybody to the Church of Rome, even in the middle of the afternoon.

But we perceived at once that it was not the Church of Rome, or any other church.  There was more than one arched entrance, and a man in each, to whom people paid a lira apiece for admission, and when we followed them in we found our feet still upon the ground, and ourselves among a forest of solid buttresses and props.  The number XV. was cut deep over the door we came in by, and the props had the air of centuries of patience.  A wave of sound seemed to sweep round in a circle inside and spend itself about us, of faint multitudinous clappings.  Conviction descended upon us suddenly, and as we stumbled after the others we shared one classic moment of anticipation, hurrying and curious in 1895 as the Romans hurried and were curious in 110, a little late for the show in the Arena.  They were all there before us, they had taken the best places, and sat, as we emerged in our astonishment, tier above tier to the row where the wall stopped and the sky began, intent, enthusiastic.  The wall threw a new moon of shadow on the west, and there the sun struck down sharply and made splendid the dyes in the women’s clothes, and turned the Italian soldiers’ buttons into flaming jewels.  And again, as we stared, the applause went round and up, from the yellow sand below to the blue sky above, and when we looked bewildered down into the Arena for the victorious gladiator, and saw a tumbling clown with a painted face instead, the illusion was only half destroyed.  We climbed and struggled for better places, treading, I fear, in our absorption on a great many Veronese toes.  Dicky said when we got them that you had to remember that the seats were Roman in order to appreciate them, they were such very cold stone, and they sloped from back to front, for the purpose, as we found out afterward from the guide-book, of letting off the rain water.