Although the quay was not yet finished, the work seemed to be
quite abandoned. There were heaps of rubbish, blocks of stone, broken
fences, and dilapidated tool-sheds all around. To such a height had it
been necessary to carry the quay walls--designed to protect the city from
floods, for the river bed has been rising for centuries past--that the
old terrace of the Boccanera gardens, with its double flight of steps to
which pleasure boats had once been moored, now lay in a hollow,
threatened with annihilation whenever the works should be finished. But
nothing had yet been levelled; the soil, brought thither for making up
the bank, lay as it had fallen from the carts, and on all sides were pits
and mounds interspersed with the abandoned building materials. Wretched
urchins came to play there, workmen without work slept in the sunshine,
and women after washing ragged linen spread it out to dry upon the
stones. Nevertheless the spot proved a happy, peaceful refuge for Pierre,
one fruitful in inexhaustible reveries when for hours at a time he
lingered gazing at the river, the quays, and the city, stretching in
front of him and on either hand.
At eight in the morning the sun already gilded the vast opening. On
turning to the left he perceived the roofs of the Trastevere, of a misty,
bluish grey against the dazzling sky. Then, just beyond the apse of San
Giovanni, on the right, the river curved, and on its other bank the
poplars of the Ospedale di Santo Spirito formed a green curtain, while
the castle of Sant' Angelo showed brightly in the distance.
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