So Rollo and Charles got into the carriage again. Rollo took out his wallet, and made a memorandum of the name of the shop where he had engaged the sash, and of the street and number. The coachman sat quietly upon his seat, waiting for Rollo to finish his writing, and expecting then to receive directions where he was to go.
"If I could only find a commissioner that speaks French or English," said Rollo, "I could tell him what we want, and he could tell the coachman, and in that way we should soon get home."
"Can't you find one at some hotel?" asked Charles.
"Why, yes," said Rollo. "Why did not I think of that? We'll stop at the very first hotel we come to. I'll let him drive on till he comes to one. No; I'll tell him to go to the Hotel d'Amerique. That is the only name of a hotel that I know."
So Rollo pronounced the words "Hotel d'Amerique" to the coachman, and the coachman, saying, "Si, signore," drove on. In a short time he drew up before the door of the hotel where Mr. George had stopped first, on arriving in town. A waiter came to the door.
"Is there a commissioner here who speaks English or French?" asked Rollo.
"Yes, sir," said a man who was standing by the side of the door when the carriage stopped, and who now came forward. "I speak English."
"I want you to help us find our hotel," said Rollo. "We don't know the name of it. I shall know it when I see it; and so I want you to get on the box with the coachman, and direct him to drive to one hotel after another, till I see which is the right one."
"Very well," said the commissioner, "I will go. Do you remember any thing about the hotel,-how it was situated."
"There was a small, open space before it," said Rollo, "and a fountain under a tree by the side of it."
"It must have been the Hotel d'Angleterre," said the commissioner.
"In going in at the front door, we went down one or two steps, instead of up," said Rollo.
"Yes," said the commissioner, "it was the Hotel d'Angleterre." Then seating himself on the box by the side of the coachman, he said to the latter, addressing him in Italian,-
"Lo canda d'Ingleterra," which is the Italian for Hotel d'Angleterre, or, as we should express it in our language, "The English Hotel."
The coachman drove on, and in a few minutes came to the hotel.
"Yes," said Rollo, as soon as he came in sight of it. "Yes, this is the very place."
If Rollo had had any doubts of his being right, they would have been dispelled by the sight of Mr. George, who was standing at the hotel door at the time they arrived.
"So you come home in a carriage," said Mr. George.
"Why, we got lost," said Rollo. "I did not take notice of the name of our hotel when we went out, and so we could not find our way home again."
"That's of no consequence," said Mr. George. "I am glad you had sense enough to take a commissioner. Whenever you get into any difficulty whatever in a European town, go right to a commissioner, and he will help you out."
So Rollo paid the coachman and the commissioner, and then he and Charles went into the hotel.
CHAPTER VI. THE COLISEUM.
The grandest of all the ruins in Rome, and perhaps, indeed, of all the ruins in the world, is the Coliseum.
The Coliseum was built as a place for the exhibition of games and spectacles. It was of an oval form, with seats rising one above another on all sides, and a large arena in the centre. There was no roof. The building was so immensely large, that it would have been almost impossible to have made a roof over it.
The spectacles which were exhibited in such buildings as these were usually combats, either of men with men, or of men with wild beasts. These were real combats, in which either the men or the beasts were actually killed. The thousands of people that sat upon the seats all around, watched the conflict, while it was going on, with intense excitement, and shouted with ferocious joy at the end of it, in honor of the victors.
The men that fought in the arena were generally captives taken in battle, in distant countries, and the wild beasts were lions, tigers, and bears, that were sent home from Africa, or from the dark forests in the north of Europe.
The great generals who went out at the head of the Roman armies to conquer these distant realms and annex them to the empire, sent home these captives and wild beasts. They sent them for the express purpose of amusing the Roman people with them, by making them fight in these great amphitheatres. There was such an amphitheatre in or near almost every large town; but the greatest, or at least the most celebrated, of all these structures, was this Coliseum at Rome.
Mr. George and Rollo went to the Coliseum in a carriage. After passing through almost the whole length of the Corso, they passed successively through several crooked and narrow streets, and at length emerged into the great region of the ruins. On every side were tall columns, broken and decayed, and immense arches standing meaningless and alone, and mounds of ancient masonry, with weeds and flowers waving in the air on the top of them. There were no houses, or scarcely any, in this part of the city, but only grassy slopes with old walls appearing here and there among them; and in some places enclosed fields and gardens, with corn, and beans, and garden vegetables of every kind, growing at the base of the majestic ruins.
The carriage stopped at one end of the Coliseum, where there was a passage way leading through stupendous arches into the interior.
They dismissed the carriage, Rollo having first paid the coachman the fare. They then, after gazing upward a moment at the vast pile of arches upon arches, towering above them, advanced towards the openings, in order to go in.
There was a soldier with a musket in his hands, bayonet set, walking to and fro at the entrance. He, however, said nothing to Mr. George and Rollo; and so, passing by him, they went in.
They passed in under immense arches of the most massive masonry, and between the great piers built to sustain the arches, until they reached the arena. There was a broad gravel walk passing across the arena from end to end, and another leading around the circumference of it. The rest of the surface was covered with grass, smooth and green.
The form of the arena was oval, as has already been said, and on every side there ascended the sloping tiers, rising one above another to a vast height, on which the seats for the spectators had been placed. Mr. George and Rollo advanced along the central walk, and looked around them, surveying the scene,-their minds filled with emotions of wonder and awe.
"What a monstrous place it was!" said Rollo.
"It was, indeed," said Mr. George.
"Is it here where the men fought with the lions and the tigers?" asked Rollo, pointing around him over the arena.
"Yes," said Mr. George.
"And up there, all around were the seats of the spectators, I suppose," said Rollo.
"Yes," said Mr. George, "on those slopes."
You must know that the scats, and all the inside finish of the Coliseum, were originally of marble, and people have stripped it all away, and left nothing but the naked masonry; and even that is all now going to ruin.
"What did they strip the marble off for?" asked Rollo.
"To build their houses and palaces with," replied Mr. George. "Half of the modern palaces of Rome are built of stone and marble plundered from the ancient ruins."
"O, uncle George!" exclaimed Rollo.
"Come out here where we can sit down," said Mr. George, "and I'll tell you all about it."
[Illustration: LOOKING DOWN FROM THE COLISEUM.]
So saying, Mr. George led the way, and Rollo followed to one side of the arena, where they could sit down on a large, flat stone, which seemed to have been an ancient step. They were over-shadowed where they sat by piers and arches, and by the masses of weeds and shrubbery that were growing on the mouldering summits of them, and waving in the wind.
In the centre of the arena was a large cross, with a sort of platform around it, and steps to go up. And all around the arena, on the sides, at equal distances, there extended a range of little chapels, with crucifixes and other Catholic symbols.