at Pompeii

On to Pompeii in the clear sunset, falling very lightly upon
mountains, islands, little ports, and indentations of the bay.

From the railway station we walked above half a mile to the Albergo
del Sole under a lucid heaven of aqua-marine colour, with Venus
large in it upon the border line between the tints of green and
blue.

The Albergo del Sole is worth commemorating. We stepped, without the
intervention of courtyard or entrance hall, straight from the little
inn garden into an open, vaulted room. This was divided into two
compartments by a stout column supporting round arches. Wooden gates
furnished a kind of fence between the atrium and what an old
Pompeian would have styled the triclinium. For in the further part a
table was laid for supper and lighted with suspended lamps. And here
a party of artists and students drank and talked and smoked. A great
live peacock, half asleep and winking his eyes, sat perched upon a
heavy wardrobe watching them. The outer chamber, where we waited in
armchairs of ample girth, had its _loggia_ windows and doors open to
the air. There were singing-birds in cages; and plants of rosemary,
iris, and arundo sprang carelessly from holes in the floor. A huge
vase filled to overflowing with oranges and lemons, the very symbol
of generous prodigality, stood in the midst, and several dogs were
lounging round. The outer twilight, blending with the dim sheen of
the lamps, softened this pretty scene to picturesqueness. Altogether
it was a strange and unexpected place. Much experienced as the
nineteenth-century nomad may be in inns, he will rarely receive a
more powerful and refreshing impression, entering one at evenfall,
than here.

There was no room for us in the inn. We were sent, attended by a boy
with a lantern, through fields of dew-drenched barley and folded
poppies, to a farmhouse overshadowed by four spreading pines.
Exceedingly soft and grey, with rose-tinted weft of steam upon its
summit, stood Vesuvius above us in the twilight. Something in the
recent impression of the dimly lighted supper-room, and in the
idyllic simplicity of this lantern-litten journey through the
barley, suggested, by one of those inexplicable stirrings of
association which affect tired senses, a dim, dreamy thought of
Palestine and Bible stories. The feeling of the _cenacolo_ blent
here with feelings of Ruth's cornfields, and the white square houses
with their flat roofs enforced the illusion. H