ing he boarded a train and, after skirting the smoking mountain
of Vesuvius, passing between rose-colored villages surrounded with
vineyards, he stopped at the station of Pompeii.

From the funereal solitudes of hotels and restaurants, the guides came
forth like a suddenly awakened swarm of wasps, lamenting that the war
had cut off the tourist trade. Perhaps he would be the only one who
would come that day. "_Signor_, at your service, at any price
whatever!..." But the sailor continued on alone. Always, in recalling
Pompeii, he had wished to see it again alone, absolutely alone, so as
to get a more direct impression of the ancient life.

His first view of it had been seventeen years ago when, as a mate of a
Catalan sailing vessel anchored in the port of Naples, he had taken
advantage of the cheapness of Sunday rates and had seen everything as
one of a crowd that was pushing and treading on everybody's feet so as
to listen to the nearest guide.

At the head of the expedition had been a priest, young and elegant, a
Roman _Monsignor_, clad in silk, and with him two showy foreign women,
who were always climbing up in the highest places, raising their skirts
rather high for fear of the star lizards that were writhing in and out
of the ruins. Ferragut, in humble admiration, always remained below,
glimpsing the country from behind their legs. "Ay! Twenty-two
years!..." Afterwards when he heard Pompeii spoken of, it always evoked
in his memory several strata of images. "Very beautiful! Very
interesting!" And in his mind's eye he saw again the palaces and
temples, but as a secondary consideration, like a shrouded background,
while in the forefront were four magnificent legs standing forth,--a
human colonnade of slender shafts swathed in transparent black silk.

The solitude so long desired for his second visit was now aggressively
in evidence. In this deserted, dead city there were to-day no other
sounds than the whirring of insect wings over the plants beginning to
clothe themselves with springtime verdure, and the invisible scampering
of reptiles under the layers of ivy.

At the gate of Herculaneum, the guardian of the little museum left
Ferragut to examine in peace the excavations of the various corpses,
petrified Pompeiians of plaster still in the attitudes of terror in
which death had surprised them. He did not abandon his post in order to
trouble the captain with his explanations; he scarcely raised his eyes
from the