ame casts a halo
around its charms; its history in the far past, its terrible mountain
and periodical convulsions from the burning womb of the earth, render
it an object of attraction to all classes.

Charles and Henry were quite alive to the impressions felt by tourists
when, whirled along by the panting steam-horse through the luxuriant
Campo Flice, they see for the first time the column of murky smoke
that rises to the clouds over the terrible Vesuvius. The old mountain
was then, as it is now, the terror and the attraction of tourists.
The catastrophes it has caused, the cities it has swallowed up in molten
ashes, the thunder of its roar when roused from its sleep, and the
unhealthy, sulphurous vapors ever vomited from its cone, render it a
veritable giant that the human race loves to see at a distance.

Our heroines were already acquainted with the "Light-house of the
Mediterranean," and from afar the lofty and ever-blazing, active Etna;
hence Vesuvius was not so attractive as a volcano as in the halo of
classic lore that hung around it. At a distance the mountain seems
to be harmless, the blue outline of the lofty cone terminating in a
dense bank of smoke, like stormclouds gathering around the snowy peaks
of the distant Apennines; but when the adventurous tourist wishes to
approach nearer to its blazing crater, and toils up its torn and
blackened sides, he will see in the immense chasms and rents traces
of might convulsions. Deep rivers of molten lava that take twenty
and thirty years to cool; the quantity of ashes and cinders that could
change the whole face of a country and bury five cities in a few hours,
must tell of the enormous furnace raging in the bowels of the earth,
of which Vesuvius is but its chimney.

Strange, Charles longed to see Vesuvius when but a tender girl in Paris.
She little thought the extraordinary course of human events would
bring her, not only under the shadow of the terrible mountain itself,
but send her through a most thrilling scene on its barren slopes.
Let us hasten on to the course of events that rendered the extraordinary
life of this girl so romantic.

Chapter XXI.

Engagement with Brigands.

Arrived in Naples, our heroines were quartered in the Molo. This is
an old fortress still used as a barrack in Naples. Its massive,
quadrangular walls were erected in the middle ages, and have withstood
many a desperate siege in the civil wars of Italy.

The detachment f