Hilda passed on the borders of this region, but had no occasion to step within it.  Its neighborhood, however, naturally partook of characteristics ’like its own.  There was a confusion of black and hideous houses, piled massively out of the ruins of former ages; rude and destitute of plan, as a pauper would build his hovel, and yet displaying here and there an arched gateway, a cornice, a pillar, or a broken arcade, that might have adorned a palace.  Many of the houses, indeed, as they stood, might once have been palaces, and possessed still a squalid kind of grandeur.  Dirt was everywhere, strewing the narrow streets, and incrusting the tall shabbiness of the edifices, from the foundations to the roofs; it lay upon the thresholds, and looked out of the windows, and assumed the guise of human life in the children that Seemed to be engendered out of it.  Their father was the sun, and their mother—­a heap of Roman mud.

It is a question of speculative interest, whether the ancient Romans were as unclean a people as we everywhere find those who have succeeded them.  There appears to be a kind of malignant spell in the spots that have been inhabited by these masters of the world, or made famous in their history; an inherited and inalienable curse, impelling their successors to fling dirt and defilement upon whatever temple, column, mined palace, or triumphal arch may be nearest at hand, and on every monument that the old Romans built.  It is most probably a classic trait, regularly transmitted downward, and perhaps a little modified by the better civilization of Christianity; so that Caesar may have trod narrower and filthier ways in his path to the Capitol, than even those of modern Rome.

As the paternal abode of Beatrice, the gloomy old palace of the Cencis had an interest for Hilda, although not sufficiently strong, hitherto, to overcome the disheartening effect of the exterior, and draw her over its threshold.  The adjacent piazza, of poor aspect, contained only an old woman selling roasted chestnuts and baked squash-seeds; she looked sharply at Hilda, and inquired whether she had lost her way.

“No,” said Hilda; “I seek the Palazzo Cenci.”

“Yonder it is, fair signorina,” replied the Roman matron.  “If you wish that packet delivered, which I see in your hand, my grandson Pietro shall run with it for a baiocco.  The Cenci palace is a spot of ill omen for young maidens.”

Hilda thanked the old dame, but alleged the necessity of doing her errand in person.  She approached the front of the palace, which, with all its immensity, had but a mean appearance, and seemed an abode which the lovely shade of Beatrice would not be apt to haunt, unless her doom made it inevitable.  Some soldiers stood about the portal, and gazed at the brown-haired, fair-cheeked Anglo-Saxon girl, with approving glances, but not indecorously.  Hilda began to ascend the staircase, three lofty flights of which were to be surmounted, before reaching the door whither she was bound.