res such as lizards or serpents to emerge and
rustle amongst the broken stones and leaves, over all of which during the
silent hours of the past night Arachne had been employed in weaving her
softest and whitest textures, that the windless morning had allowed to
remain intact. The only sign of animate life was visible in a pair of
lively gold-finches, which with merry notes were fluttering from thistle
to thistle, picking the down from each ripened flower-head and prodigally
scattering the seeds upon the weed-grown soil where once had bloomed the
odorous Roses of Paestum that the poets loved.

Sitting thus amid the silence and solitude of a city half as old as Time
itself, we were unexpectedly aroused by a gruff salutation proceeding from
a little distance behind the temple. Turning quickly in the direction of
the sound, we perceived the figure of a tall bearded man dressed in
conical hat, with goat-skin trousers and cross-gartered legs, who but for
the gun slung across his shoulders by a stout leathern strap might well
have been mistaken for an apparition of the god Pan himself returned to
earth. Vague recollections of the brigand Manzoni, the scourge of the
neighbourhood and the murderer of more than one unhappy visitor to the
ruins of Paestum in the good old _vetturino_ days, flashed through our
mind, as we surveyed the muscular frame and the fowling-piece of the
strange being before us. It was with a sigh of relief that we noted upon
the straight stretch of white road leading to the Little Temple in the
distance the presence of two royal _carabinieri_ majestically riding at a
foot's pace, their tall forms enveloped in long black cloaks whose folds
swept over their horses' tails. We felt reassured, and when for a second
time the guttural voice addressed us in unintelligible _patois_, we
perceived the innocent object of this mysterious visit. Searching in a
capacious goat-skin bag, a species of Neapolitan sporran, this descendant
of the Poseidonian Greeks produced and held up to our gaze three birds
that he had shot in his morning's hunting. For the modest sum of three
lire the game exchanged hands, and the sportsman departed, well satisfied
with his luck. Next evening we feasted royally in our inn at Salerno upon
a succulent woodcock fattened upon the berries of the wood of Persano, and
upon a couple of snipe that had grown plump amongst the Neptunian marshes.
Nor was this dainty addition to our supper that night altog