I start walking south again. I pass the Palazzo Borghese, a building that has known many famous tenants, including Pauline, Napoleon's scandalous sister, who kept untold numbers of lovers there. She also liked to use her maids as footstools. (One always hopes that one has read this sentence wrong in one's Companion Guide to Rome, but, no—it is accurate. Pauline also liked to be carried to her bath, we are told, by "a giant Negro.") Then I stroll along the banks of the great, swampy, rural-looking Tiber, all the way down to the Tiber Island, which is one of my favorite quiet places in Rome. This island has always been associated with healing. A Temple of Aesculapius was built there after a plague in 291 BC; in the Middle Ages a hospital was constructed there by a group of monks called the Fatebene-fratelli (which can groovily be translated as "The Do-Good Brothers"); and there is a hospital on the island even to this day.

我开始往南持续走去。我经过博盖塞宫，许多名人曾住过此地，包括拿破仑恶名远播的妹妹宝琳（Pauline），她不知让多少情人住过这里。她还喜欢把她的侍女当脚凳用。（你始终希望自己误读《罗马随身指南》当中这句话，然而这却是千真万确的事。我们还得知，宝琳喜欢让一名高壮的黑人抱去洗浴。）而后我沿着宽大、泥泞、乡村风情的台伯河沿岸漫步，一路走到台伯岛（Tiber Island），这儿是我在罗马最喜爱的僻静地区之一。这座岛向来与治愈的意象相连在一起。公元前291年，在一场瘟疫过后，这儿盖了一座医神殿；中世纪有一群名叫行善弟兄的修士在此处盖医院；即使到今天，这座岛上仍有一家医院。

I cross over the river to Trastevere—the neighborhood that claims to be inhabited by the truest Romans, the workers, the guys who have, over the centuries, built all the monuments on the other side of the Tiber. I eat my lunch in a quiet trattoria here, and I linger over my food and wine for many hours because nobody in Trastevere is ever going to stop you from lingering over your meal if that's what you would like to do. I order an assortment of bruschette, some spaghetti cacio e pepe (that simple Roman specialty of pasta served with cheese and pepper) and then a small roast chicken, which I end up sharing with the stray dog who has been watching me eat my lunch the way only a stray dog can.

我过河到达特拉斯特维雷区（Trastevere）——此区声称是原汁原味的罗马人所居住，而且是在台伯河对岸建造所有历史建筑的工人聚居的地方。我在一家安静的小餐馆吃午饭，拖拖拉拉地吃饭喝酒，持续数个小时，因为在特拉斯特维雷，没有人会阻止你慢吞吞吃饭，只要你自己喜欢。我点了各式bruschette（面包）spaghetti cacio e pepe（简单的罗马特色菜，添加起司与胡椒），以及一小只烤鸡。烤鸡最后我和一条盯着我吃午饭的野狗分享了。

Then I walk back over the bridge, through the old Jewish ghetto, a sorely tearful place that survived for centuries until it was emptied by the Nazis. I head back north, past the Piazza Navona with its mammoth fountain honoring the four great rivers of Planet Earth (proudly, if not totally accurately, including the sluggish Tiber in that list). Then I go have a look at the Pantheon. I try to look at the Pantheon every chance I get, since I am here in Rome after all, and an old proverb says that anyone who goes to Rome without seeing the Pantheon "goes and comes back an ass."

而后我过桥往回走，经过犹太区，这历尽沧桑的地方存留了数个世纪，直到被纳粹扫除尽净。我朝北走回去，经过纳佛那广场（Piazza Navona）；广场上的巨大喷泉是为了纪念地球上的四条大河（他们引以为傲地——尽管不完全正确——将台伯河列入名单之中）。接着我去观看万神殿。我一有机会就去看万神殿，毕竟我就在罗马；有句古老谚语说，去罗马不看万神殿，回去的时候就是蠢驴。

On my way back home I take a little detour and stop at the address in Rome I find most strangely affecting—the Augusteum. This big, round, ruined pile of brick started life as a glorious mausoleum, built by Octavian Augustus to house his remains and the remains of his family for all of eternity. It must have been impossible for the emperor to have imagined at the time that Rome would ever be anything but a mighty Augustus-worshipping empire. How could he possibly have foreseen the collapse of the realm? Or known that, with all the aqueducts destroyed by barbarians and with the great roads left in ruin, the city would empty of citizens, and it would take almost twenty centuries before Rome ever recovered the population she had boasted during her height of glory?

回家途中，我绕道而行，造访我认为罗马最令人出奇感动的地点——奥古斯都庙。这座砖头堆建的巨大圆形遗迹，最早是壮观的陵墓，由屋大维•奥古斯都所建，用以永生永世存放他的遗骨以及他的家族的遗骸。这位皇帝肯定不曾想象过罗马除了崇拜奥古斯都的强大帝国外，会有其他面目的存在。他怎可能预见帝国的瓦解？或预知蛮族摧毁罗马所有的水道桥，条条大道皆成废墟，市民净空，几乎在经过20个世纪后，这座城市才得以恢复其盛世时期的人口？