eBooks Base 2000

J----- soon
caught a large one with two tails; one, a sort of afterthought, or
appendix, or corollary to the original tail, and growing out from it
instead of from the body of the lizard. These reptiles are very
abundant, and J----- has already brought home several, which make their
escape and appear occasionally darting to and fro on the carpet. Since
we have been here, J----- has taken up various pursuits in turn. First
he voted himself to gathering snail-shells, of which there are many
sorts; afterwards he had a fever for marbles, pieces of which he found on
the banks of the Tiber, just on the edge of its muddy waters, and in the
Palace of the Caesars, the Baths of Caracalla, and indeed wherever else
his fancy led him; verde antique, rosso antico, porphyry, giallo antico,
serpentine, sometimes fragments of bas-reliefs and mouldings, bits of
mosaic, still firmly stuck together, on which the foot of a Caesar had
perhaps once trodden; pieces of Roman glass, with the iridescence glowing
on them; and all such things, of which the soil of Rome is full.


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