Page:Her Roman Lover (Frothingham, 1911).djvu/80

“I love Rome as few of those who are Romans love her,” he said, while taking tea with them in the crimson salon after their first expedition. “Her greatest lovers—and she has had so many that she may be called the supreme courtisane of cities—have been those from other countries and other races. And of the great men, the statesmen, the rulers, the artists, who have made her glorious, few were born under her walls. They came from distant lands and gave her their best, willing to find in her their fame or their disgrace. What has she in herself that she should draw men so? Has she a great harbor or a great river that she should have been chosen as the capital of the most powerful empire that the world has known? They will tell you that she had fine salt marshes, and that these were of vast importance to her people. But cities have possessed salt marshes without being great, as they have been great without salt marshes. Her first empire fell, and another rose in its place,—an empire of God, and those who call themselves vicars of Christ chose her as the capital from which they would rule the Christian world. In our own age Italian patriots bled and died that she and none other should be capital of the new nation which is now lifting her head among the others of Europe. What had she that empires old and new, empires of

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