ping onwards with
little steps like a bird that only knows how to fly, was teetering
along on high heels.

The two looked uneasily at this man appearing so unexpectedly among the
ruins. They had the preoccupied and timorous air of those going to a
forbidden place or meditating a bad action. Their first movement was an
impulse to go back, but the guide continued on his way so imperturbably
that they followed on.

Ferragut smiled. He knew where they were going. The little cross street
of the _Lupanares_ was near. The guard would open a door, remaining on
watch with dramatic anxiety as though he were endangering his job by
this favor in exchange for a tip. And the two ladies were about to see
some tarnished, clumsy paintings showing nothing new or original in the
world,--nude, yellowish figures, just alike at first glance with no
other novelty than an exaggerated emphasis on sex distinction.

Half an hour afterwards Ulysses abandoned his bench, for his eyes had
tired of the severe monotony of the ruins. In the street of the Hot
Baths (_Thermae_), he again visited the house of the tragic poet. Then
he admired that of Pansa, the largest and most luxurious in the city.
This Pansa had undoubtedly been the most pretentious citizen of
Pompeii. His dwelling occupied an entire block. The _xystus_, or
garden, adjoining the house had been laid out like a Grecian landscape
with cypresses and laurels between squares of roses and violets.

Following along the exterior wall of the garden, Ferragut again met the
two ladies. They were looking at the flowers across the bars of the
door. The younger one was expressing in English her admiration for some
roses that were flinging their royal color around the pedestal of an
old faun.

Ulysses felt an irresistible desire to show off in a gallant and
intrepid fashion. He wished to pay the two foreign ladies some
theatrical homage. He felt that necessity of attracting attention in
some gay and dashing way that characterizes Spaniards far from home.

With the agility of a mast-climber, he leaped the garden wall in one
bound. The two ladies gave a cry of surprise, as though they had
witnessed some impossible maneuver. This audacity appeared to upset the
ideas of the older one, accustomed to life in disciplined towns that
rigidly respect every established prohibition. Her first movement was
of flight, so as not to be mixed up in the escapade of this stranger.
But after a few steps she paused.