t with the book-keeper of the hotel. This done, he took a
carozella and drove to the seashore. He got out of the cab and entered
the Villa on foot from the Largo di Vittoria end.

He stared at me very hard. And I understood then how really
impressionable he was. Every small fact and event of that evening stood
out in his memory as if endowed with mystic significance. If he did not
mention to me the colour of the pony which drew the carozella, and the
aspect of the man who drove, it was a mere oversight arising from his
agitation, which he repressed manfully.

He had then entered the Villa Nazionale from the Largo di Vittoria end.
The Villa Nazionale is a public pleasure-ground laid out in grass plots,
bushes, and flower-beds between the houses of the Riviera di Chiaja and
the waters of the bay. Alleys of trees, more or less parallel, stretch
its whole length--which is considerable. On the Riviera di Chiaja side
the electric tramcars run close to the railings. Between the garden and
the sea is the fashionable drive, a broad road bordered by a low wall,
beyond which the Mediterranean splashes with gentle murmurs when the
weather is fine.

As life goes on late at night in Naples, the broad drive was all astir
with a brilliant swarm of carriage lamps moving in pairs, some creeping
slowly, others running rapidly under the thin, motionless line of
electric lamps defining the shore. And a brilliant swarm of stars hung
above the land humming with voices, piled up with houses, glittering
with lights--and over the silent flat shadows of the sea.

The gardens themselves are not very well lit. Our friend went forward in
the warm gloom, his eyes fixed upon a distant luminous region extending
nearly across the whole width of the Villa, as if the air had glowed
there with its own cold, bluish, and dazzling light. This magic spot,
behind the black trunks of trees and masses of inky foliage, breathed
out sweet sounds mingled with bursts of brassy roar, sudden clashes of
metal, and grave, vibrating thuds.

As he walked on, all these noises combined together into a piece of
elaborate music whose harmonious phrases came persuasively through a
great disorderly murmur of voices and shuffling of feet on the gravel of
that open space. An enormous crowd immersed in the electric light, as
if in a bath of some radiant and tenuous fluid shed upon their heads by
luminous globes, drifted in its hundreds round the band. Hundreds
more sat on chai