328 BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.
with Dolly and the realization of his dearest hopes, the poetic city now and then seemed to stimulate Sam into unexpected flashes of intellectuality.
On the last night of their visit to Verona, the Milbanke party were favored with special permission to visit, by moonlight, the arena where the Christian martyrs were driven from their prisons out among the wild beasts, to audiences of captains, senators, ladies, priests, and the po- pulace. He would have been indeed insensible to poetry or human sympathy who could have seen the moonbeams falling upon the marble seats and the broken arches without a pitying sigh for the past, and a grateful reflection upon the privileges of liberty and toleration in the present. Sam Swynford felt as they wandered through the great solemn place, a strong inspiration of protection towards Dolly, which she reciprocated in a more or less comfortable nestle under the wing, or to put it without metaphor, under the strong arm of her prosperous young London lover.
When they were most inclined to linger over sentimen- tal reflections about the scenes in the arena, Walter Mil- banke was busy with thoughts of his final show, which was the Tomb of Juliet in the moonlight. " Not," he said, as he led the way with the guide to the carriage which awaited them at the entrance of the Colosseum, " Juliet's Tomb as ordinary visitors see it, but all to ourselves with this glorious moon."
Driving through the pleasant streets, and saluted here and there by the music of evidently social evenings which gave occasional light and merriment to sundry houses en route, they presently came to a quieter part of Verona, lighted only by the great white moon. They approached the pleasant corner selected for Juliet's apocryphal tomb through an old-fashioned garden, with patches of green turf and blooming gilliflowers, rows of peas in blossom that rivalled the white Marguerite daisies in the moonlight
