noon
`` True , most noble sir , '' faltered the discomfited secretary , yet with a vindictive glance from his treacherous eyes . `` Your Excellency is always right . '' For a time they rode on in silence , the secretary falling obsequiously a little to the rear . It was now high noon , and the crowd and bustle on the Appian Way redoubled . This Queen of Roads -LSB- 4 -RSB- ran straight as an arrow up-hill and down from Rome to Capua and Brundisium , a distance of over three hundred miles . Though then nearly six hundred years old , it was as firm as the day it was laid , and after the lapse of fifteen hundred years more , during which `` the Goth , the Christian , Time , War , Flood and Fire , '' have devastated the land , its firm lava pavement of broad basaltic slabs seems as enduring as ever . On every side rolled the undulating Campagna , now a scene of melancholy desolation , then cultivated like a garden , abounding in villas and mansions whose marble columns gleamed snowy white through the luxuriant foliage of their embosoming myrtle and laurel groves .