Among the Brigands

by James De Mille

After inspecting the chamber just mentioned, they were taken to a place where they saw what had once been the pedestal of a statue. Here Michael Angelo showed them a hollow niche, which was so contrived that one might conceal himself there, and speak words which the ignorant and superstitious populace might believe to come from the idol's own stony lips. This one thing showed the full depth of ancient ignorance and superstition; and over this Michael Angelo waxed quite eloquent, and proceeded to deliver himself of a number of impressive sentences of a highly important character, which he uttered with that fluent volubility peculiar to the whole race of guides, ciceroni, and showmen, in all parts of the world. These moral maxims were part of Michael Angelo's regular routine, and the moment that he found himself here in this Temple of Isis, the stream of wisdom would always begin to flow.

The next place to which Michael Angelo intended to take them was the amphitheatre, which could be seen from where they were standing. All this time David had been more eager than any of the others, and far more profoundly moved. He felt his soul stirred to its inmost depth by the thrilling scenes through which he had been moving. It seemed to him as though there were revealed here to his eyes, in one glance, all that he had been laboriously acquiring from books by the study of years. But this was better than books. These Roman houses, into which he could walk, were far better than any number of plans or engraved prints, however accurately done. These temples afforded an insight into the old pagan religion better far than volumes of description. These streets, and shops, and public squares, and wall, and gates, and tombs, all gave him an insight into the departed Roman civilization that was far fresher, and more vivid, and more profound, than any that he had ever gained before. It seemed to him that one day was too small for such a place. He must come again and again, he thought. He was unwilling to go on with the rest, but lingered longer than any over each spot, and was always the last to quit any place which they visited.

They stopped on their way at the Tragic and Comic Theatres, and at length reached the Amphitheatre itself. This edifice is by far the largest in the city, and is better preserved than any. It is built of large blocks of a dark volcanic stone, and constructed in that massive style which the Romans lived, and of which they have left the best examples in these huge amphitheatres. As this Amphitheatre now stands, it might still serve for one of those displays for which it was built. Tier after tier those seats arise, which once had accommodations for fifteen or twenty thousand human beings. On these, it is said, the Pompeians were seated when that awful volcanic storm burst forth by which the city was rained. Down from these seats they fled in wildest disorder, all panic-stricken, rushing down the steps, and crowding through the doorways, trampling one another under foot, in that mad race for life; while overhead the storm gathered darker and darker, and the showers of ashes fell, and the suffocating sulphuric vapors arose, and amid the volcanic storm the lightnings of the sky flashed forth, illuminating all the surrounding gloom with a horrid lustre, and blending with the subterranean rumblings of the earthquake the thunder of the upper air.

From this cause the Amphitheatre may be considered the central spot of interest in Pompeii. What little has been told of the fate of the city gathers around this place, and to him who sits upon those seats there is a more vivid realization of that awful scene than can be obtained anywhere else.

On reaching the Amphitheatre they seated themselves on the stone steps, about half way up the circle of seats, and each one gave way to the feelings that filled him. They had walked now for hours, and all of them felt somewhat wearied, so that the rest on these seats was grateful. Here they sat and rested.

CHAPTER XIX.

Lofty classical enthusiasm of David, and painful Lack of feeling on the Part of Frank.—David, red hot with the Flow of the Past, is suddenly confronted with the Present.—The Present dashes Cold Water upon his glowing Enthusiasm.—The Gates.—Minor, Aeacus, and Rhadamanthus.—The Culprits.

As they thus rested on the seats of the Amphitheatre, the classical enthusiasm of David rose superior to fatigue, and his enthusiastic feelings burst forth without restraint, in a long and somewhat incoherent rhapsody about the fell of Pompeii. Full before them, as they sat, rose Vesuvius; and they saw that which helped them to reproduce the past more vividly, for even now the dense, dark cloud of the volcano was gathering, and the thick smoke-volumes were rolling forth from the crater. Far into the heavens the smoke clouds arose, ascending in a dark pillar till they reached the upper strata of the atmosphere, where they unfolded themselves, and spread out afar—to the east, and the west, and the north, and the south. Some such appearance as this the mountain may have had, as it towered gloomily before the Pompeians on that day of days. Some such scene as this may have appeared, only deepened into terrors a thousand fold more gloomy, to the population of the doomed city, as they gathered here on these seats for the last time.

Such were the ideas of David Clark; and these ideas he poured forth in a long rhapsody, full of wild enthusiasm. At length, however, that enthusiasm flagged, and he was compelled to stop for want of breath.

"O, that's all very fine," said Frank, suddenly, as David stopped, and breaking the silence which had followed his eloquent outburst,—"that's all very fine, of course. You have a habit, David, my son, of going into raptures over old bones and old stones, but after all, I'd just like to ask you one question."