"Viva il Prefétto! Viva L'opposizione!" poppa repeated pityingly, as another pair of posters came in sight. "Well, it won't ever do the Government of Italy any good, but I guess I'm with the Opposizione."
The road grew emptier and sandy white, and commerce forsook it but for here and there a little shop with fat yellow bags, which were the people's cheeses, hanging in bladders at the door. Crumbled gateways began to appear, and we saw through them that the villa gardens inside ran down and dropped their rose leaves into the blue of the Mediterranean. We met the country people going their ways to town; they looked at us with friendly patronage, knowing all about us, what we had come to see, and the foolishness of it, and especially the ridiculous cost of carozza that take people to Pompeii. And at last, just as the sun and the jolting and the powdery white dust combined had instigated us all to suggest to the Senator how much better it would have been to come by rail, the ponies made a glad and jingling sweep under the acacias of the Hôtel Diomede, which is at the portals of Pompeii.
It seemed a casual and a cheerful place, full of open doors and proprietary Neapolitans who might have been brothers and sisters-in-law, whose conversation we interrupted coming in. There had been domestic potations; a very fat lady, with a horn comb in her hair, wiped liquid rings off the table with her apron, removing the glasses, while a collarless male person with an agreeable smile and a soft felt hat placed wooden chairs for us in a row. Poppa knows no Italian, but they seemed to understand from what he said that we wanted things to drink, and brought us with surprising accuracy precisely what each of us preferred, lemonade for momma and me, and beverages consisting largely, though not entirely, of soda water for the Senator and Mr. Dod. While we refreshed ourselves, another, elderly, grizzled, and one-eyed, came and took up a position just outside the door opposite and sang a song of adventurous love, boxing his own ears in the chorus with the liveliest effect. A further agreeable person waited upon us and informed us that he was the interpreter, he would everything explain to us, that this was a beggar man who wanted us to give him some small money, but there was no compulsion if we did not wish to do so. I think he gave us that interpretation for nothing. The fat lady then produced a large fan which she waved over us assiduously, and the collarless man in the soft hat stood by to render aid in any further emergency, smiling upon us as if we were delicacies out of season. Poppa bore it as long as he could, and we all made an unsuccessful effort to appear as if we were quite accustomed to as much attention and more in the hotels of America; but in a very few minutes we knew all the disadvantages of being of too much importance. Presently the one-eyed man gave way to a pair of players on the flute and mandolin.
"Look here," said poppa at this, to the interpreter, "you folks are putting yourselves out on our account a great deal more than is necessary. We are just ordinary travelling public, and you don't need to entertain us with side shows that we haven't ordered any more than if we belonged to your own town. See?" But the interpreter did not see. He beckoned instead to an engaging daughter of the fat lady, who approached modestly with a large book of photographs, which she opened before the Senator, kneeling beside his chair.
"Great Scott!" exclaimed poppa, "I'm not a crowned head. Rise, Miss Diomede."
Removing his cigar, he assisted the young lady to her feet and led her to a sofa at the other end of the room, where, as they turned over the photographs together, I heard him ask her if she objected to tobacco.
"You may go," said momma to the interpreter, "and explain the scenes. Mr. Wick will enjoy them much more if he understands them." The freedom from conventional restraint which characterises American society very seldom extends to married gentlemen.
We had to wait twenty minutes for the other party, on account of their British objection to anybody's dust. Even Mr. Mafferton looked quelled when they arrived, and Isabel quite abject, while Mrs. Portheris wore that air of justification which no circumstance could impair, which was particularly her own. She would not sit down. "It gives these people a claim on you," she said. "I did not come here to run up an hotel bill, but to see Pompeii. Pompeii I demand to see." The players on the flute and mandolin looked at Mrs. Portheris consideringly and then strolled away, and the guide, with a sorrowful glance at the landlady, put on his hat. "I can explain you everything," he said with an inflection that placed the responsibility for remaining in ignorance upon our own heads, but Mrs. Portheris waved him away with her fan. "No," she said. "I beg that this man shall not be allowed to inflict himself upon our party. I particularly desire to form my own impression of the historic city, that city that did so much for the reputation of Sir Henry Bulwer Lytton. Besides, these people mount up ridiculously, and with servants at home on half wages, and Consols in the state they are, one is really compelled to economise."
