"There is but one Naples, as there is but one Rome and one Florence," said Barbara softly. "Each city is grandly beautiful in its own individual way, but for none has nature done so much as for Naples."
In silence they watched the sunset glow and the oncoming twilight, until the call for dinner sounded through the halls.
"I fear to leave it all," said Bettina, turning reluctantly away, "lest we can never find it again."
The next three days were crowded to the brim. One was spent in going to the top of Vesuvius; another in the great Museum, so interesting with its remains of antique sculptures, so destitute of important paintings; the third in driving about the city, to San Martino, and around the point of Posilipo, ending with a visit to Virgil's tomb.
Then came the Sabbath, and they attended morning service in the Cathedral,—in the very chapel of San Januarius which is decorated with pictures by Domenichino, Guido Reni, and Lanfranco, the completion of which was prevented by the jealousy of the Neapolitan painters.
The next morning they went to Pompeii, where in the late afternoon carriages were to meet them for beginning the drive through Castellammare, Sorrento, and Amalfi to La Cava.
The absorbing charm of Pompeii, whose resurrection began after nearly seventeen centuries of burial and is yet only partial, at once seized them,—all of them,—for, visit the ruined city often as one may, yet the sight of its worn streets with their high stepping-stones, its broken pavements, its decorated walls, its shops,—all possess such an atmosphere of departed life that its fascination is complete, and does not yield to familiarity.
After hours of wandering about with their guide, seeing the points of most interest,—the beautiful houses recently excavated, the homes of Glaucus, of Pansa, of Sallust, of Orpheus, of Diomedes and very many others; the forum, temples, and amphitheatre—they sat long amid the ruins, looking at the fatal mountain, so close at hand, and the desolation at its foot, and meditated upon the terrors of that fearful night.
Malcom read aloud the story as related by Pliny, a volume of whose letters he had put into his pocket, and Margery recited some lines of a beautiful sonnet on Pompeii which she had once learned, whose author she did not remember:—
"No chariot wheels invade her stony roads;
Priestless her temples, lone her vast abodes,
Deserted,—forum, palace, everywhere!
Yet are her chambers for the master fit,
Her shops are ready for the oil and wine,
Ploughed are her streets with many a chariot line,
And on her walls to-morrow's play is writ,—
Of that to-morrow which might never be!"