evoured by the volcanic fire, only the stairways remaining.

In this gracious city of amiable and easy-going life, more Greek than
Roman, all the lower floors of the plebeian houses had been occupied by
petty traders. They were shops with doors the same size as the
establishment, four-sided caves like the Arabian _zocos_ whose
furthermost corners were visible to the buyer stopping in the street.
Many still had their stone counters and their large earthen jars for
the sale of wine and oil. The private dwellings had no facades, and
their outer walls were smooth and unapproachable, but with an interior
court providing the surrounding chambers with light as in the palaces
of the Orient. The doors were merely half-doors of escape, parts of
larger ones. All life was concentrated around the interior, the central
patio, rich and magnificent, adorned with fish ponds, statues and
flower-bordered beds.

Marble was rare. The columns constructed of bricks were covered with a
stucco that offered a fine surface for painting. Pompeii had been a
polychrome city. All the columns, red or yellow, had capitals of divers
colors. The center of the walls was generally occupied with a little
picture, usually erotic, painted on black varnished walls varied with
red and amber hues. On the friezes were processions of cupids and
tritons, between rustic and maritime emblems.

Tired of his excursion through the dead city, Ferragut seated himself
on a stone bench among the ruins of the temple, and looked over the map
spread out on his knees, enjoying the titles with which the most
interesting constructions had been designated because of a mosaic or a
painting,--Villa of Diomedes, the House of Meleager, of the wounded
Adonis, of the Labryinth, of the Faun, of the Black Wall. The names of
the streets were not less interesting: The Road of the Hot Baths, the
Road of the Tombs, the Road of Abundance, the Road of the Theaters.

The sound of footsteps made the sailor raise his head. Two ladies were
passing, preceded by a guide. One was tall, with a firm tread. They
were wearing face-veils and still another larger veil crossing behind
and coming over the arms like a shawl. Ferragut surmised a great
difference in the ages of the two. The stout one was moving along with
an assumed gravity. Her step was quick, but with a certain authority
she planted on the ground her large feet, loosely shod and with low
heels. The younger one, taller and more slender, trip