We leave Naples by carriage, in the afternoon. The city has a depressed look, and is unusually quiet. While we cross from Ponte della Maddalena to S. Giovanni a Teduccio, the last people on the road disappear. Only now and then an automobile passes us, but the people inside are quite hidden under their wraps and masks. Then an old dirty char-banc rolls by, then again a loaded tram, but nobody is laughing, nobody is speaking. All along the streets, on the sidewalks, in the shops, silence is getting deeper, and more intense. True it is Sunday, it is four o'clock, the hour when people here rest, but the silence is still more intense at Portici, and its closed villas, its closed shops, have a singular aspect. Now and then something moving comes towards us, directed to Naples. It is a little cart, two little carts, several carts, all loaded with furniture, especially with mattresses. A silent driver leads the wagon, and we turn round to look at these last people escaping, for in these last fifteen hours everybody has been running away with his furniture, in all directions, especially towards Naples. These whom we meet must have been delayed in their flight, they are worn out from exertion, and almost prostrated. Portici is deserted and solitary, not a single woman at the window, not a person before the houses. Hall doors and shutters are locked, and the most absolute emptiness and desertion reigns every where. Our mind is getting depressed, and our sadness increases when we see the complete solitude of Resina and Torre del Greco, the lovely little towns layed between gardens of orange trees, and the sea. It is indeed a heart-rending squallor! The charming towns of Portici, Resina, Torre del Greco, are now completely abandoned, not a soul is left there. They look as dead towns, quite as if dead and deserted since many and many years--Nobody is there to tell us the panic, the terrible panic that has set these people flying for safety, but we know it, we can easily imagine it since we see with our mortal eyes, abandon and death every where. But did Resina, Portici, and Torre del Greco, ever live? Did these windows, these doors ever open? Were there ever people in these houses, in these streets? Like an immense colossus the pine of smoke rises on the mountain, and everything is shut out from our sight on account of the ashes, clouds, and vapors filling the air. Only the lightning is visible, the thousand flashes cutting the livid and opaque gray. And life is only there on the mountain of horrors, whilst here nothing more is living. * * *