Far easier was it to go back to Rome in the Temple of Diana, so
beautiful in ruin and so little changed except by time, as to bring to
the heart a pang of mingled joy and pain, of sadness which women love
and men resent--unless they are poets. Doves were cooing softly there,
the only oracles of the temple in these days; and what they said to each
other and to us seemed more mysterious than the sayings of common doves,
because their ancestors had no doubt handed down much wisdom to them,
from generation to generation, ever since Diana was taken seriously as a
goddess, or perhaps even since the dim days when Celtic gods were
reigning powers.
From the gardens we went slowly to that other temple which unthinking
people and guide-books have named the Maison Carree, the most lovely
temple out of Greece, and the one which has suffered most from sheer,
uncompromising stupidity in modern days. Now it rests from persecution,
though it shows its scars; and I wondered dully, as I stood gazing at
the Corinthian columns--strong, yet graceful--how so dull a copy as the
Madeleine could possibly have been evolved from such perfection.
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