We left our hero just as he is apparently being moved by the song of a canary to take a trip to Italy, the motive for which is apparently not clear to him. We learn, further, that neither destination nor purpose are firmly established in his mind. An inner restlessness and dissatisfaction drive him from Rome to Naples and farther on from there; he encounters the swarm of honeymoon travellers, and, forced to notice the tender “Augustuses” and “Gretchens,” is utterly unable to understand the acts and impulses of the couples. He arrives at the conclusion that, of all the follies of humanity, “marriage, at any rate, took the prize as the greatest and most incomprehensible one, and the senseless wedding trips to Italy somehow capped the climax of this buffoonery.” (_G._ p. 30.) At Rome, disturbed in his sleep by the proximity of a loving couple, he flees, forthwith, to Naples, only to find there another “Augustus” and “Gretchen.” As he believes that he understands from their conversation that the majority of those bird-couples does not intend to nest in the rubbish of Pompeii, but to take flight to Capri, he decides to do what they do not do, and finds himself in Pompeii, “contrary to expectations and intentions,” a few days after the beginning of his journey—without, however, finding there the peace which he seeks. The rôle which, until then, has been played by the honeymoon couples, who made him uneasy and vexed his senses, is now assumed by house-flies, in which he is inclined to see the incarnation of absolute evil and worthlessness. The two tormentors blend into one; many fly-couples remind him of honeymoon travellers, address each other probably, in their language, also as “My only Augustus” and “My sweet Gretchen.” Finally he cannot help admitting “that his dissatisfaction was certainly caused not by his surroundings alone, but to a degree found its origin in him.” (_G._ p. 40.) He feels that he is out of sorts because he lacks something without being able to explain what.