Of the subsequent history of the Saint Elias Fountain, which alone still continued to flow, the bibliographer also learned much—how its fame had grown in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries till it attracted invalids from the most distant provinces, necessitating the erection of a palatial pump-room for the better accommodations of visitors; how latterly again the waters had unaccountably fallen into disfavour with the public. And this, notwithstanding the fact that in 1872 the celebrated Privy Councillor Dr. Saponaro, Director of the Montecitorio Home for Incurables, had written, at the urgent solicitation of the Nepenthe Town Authorities (who were alarmed at the decrease in their bathing-tax revenue) a pamphlet—a pamphlet which, by the way, cost them a mint of money in view of the a
