It was all over before one; and the pope was borne out again, and the vast crowd began to discharge itself. But it was a long time before the carriages were all filled and rolled off. I stood for a half hour watching the stream go by,--the pompous soldiers, the peasants and citizens, the dazzling equipages, and jaded, exhausted women in black, who had sat or stood half a day under the dome, and could get no carriage; and the great state coaches of the cardinals, swinging high in the air, painted and gilded, with three noble footmen hanging on behind each, and a cardinal's broad face in the window. VESUVIUS CLIMBING A VOLCANO Everybody who comes to Naples,--that is, everybody except the lady who fell from her horse the other day at Resina and injured her shoulder, as she was mounting for the ascent,--everybody, I say, goes up Vesuvius, and nearly every one writes impressions and descriptions of the performance. If you believe the tales of travelers, it is an undertaking of great hazard, an experience of frightful emotions. How unsafe it is, especially for ladies, I heard twenty times in Naples before I had been there a day. Why, there was a lady thrown from her horse and nearly killed, only a week ago; and she still lay ill at the next hotel, a witness of the truth of the story. I imagined her plunged down a precipice of lava, or pitched over the lip of the crater, and only rescued by the devotion of a gallant guide, who threatened to let go of her if she didn't pay him twenty francs instantly. This story, which will live and grow for years in this region, a waxing and never-waning peril of the volcano, I found, subsequently, had the foundation I have mentioned above. The lady did go to Resina in order to make the ascent of Vesuvius, mounted a horse there, fell off, being utterly unhorsewomanly, and hurt herself; but her injury had no more to do with Vesuvius than it had with the entrance of Victor Emanuel into Naples, which took place a couple of weeks after. Well, as I was saying, it is the fashion to write descriptions of Vesuvius; and you might as well have mine, which I shall give to you in rough outline.