We devoted the whole of the next day to Pompeii, the long-buried city at the foot of the great destroyer. Nothing but desolation and silence around! Walking amid the wrecks, the mystery of the past took possession of us and the busy lives which animated formerly the deserted town, rose before us. The cinder-choked streets have preserved their ancient denominations. The buildings remind me of those of Erzeroum, with a fountain in the middle of the inner court. The frescoed walls have kept their original colour, and the sign-boards over the houses and the indecent bas-reliefs (reminiscences of not over pure-minded antiquity) are perfectly intact. Here is the grand _Basilique_ the symbol of an ancient disappeared civilisation and the pagan temples of Venus, Mercury and Jupiter. A little further, in the quarter of the Gladiators, is the _Forum_ with the immense tribune in which the people assembled for all sorts of meetings. In a separate museum curious remains of past ages are gathered: artistically worked jewels, mosaics and petrified corpses in almost as fine condition as 1800 years ago in 79 A.D. There is a young woman lying prostrate on the marble floor; the position of the hands indicate that she had instinctively tried to protect her face from the hot ashes when the death-storm broke and Vesuvius blotted out Pompeii. We saw objects just dug up: coins, vases and pottery. We passed before bars which looked as if they had just been freshly painted, where wine had been sold. Here are loaves of bread lying on the counter of a baker’s shop, transformed into stone and looking as if they had just come out of the oven. Before the shop, a petrified dog, curled up, seems to be sleeping. Our old cicerone, who had lived all his life at the foot of the great mountain, had worked as guide to Pompeii for fifty-five years. He told us that there were presently forty guides at Pompeii. When we asked if it wasn’t dangerous for him to live so near to the volcano, the old guide replied, with pride, that they were all of them sons of Vesuvius, and had no need, therefore, to dread it.