We found ourselves in a great court, paved with white marble, and decorated at each end with light Moorish peristyles: it is called the Court of the Alberca.

Studying these new revelations with love and veneration, it was not long before the pure Hellenic spirit, confined in the severe peristyles and cellas of the Paestum temples, entered into his heart, with all its elastic capacities, all its secret and mysterious sympathies for the new life which had sprung up during its long imprisonment in those stained and shattered marbles.

I systematically passed from table to table all around that spacious peristyle.