When she had exhausted her repertoire some tables for cards were made up and such guests as did not wish to play settled themselves for a conversazione; so at half-past eleven it was easy for Roger to excuse himself on the plea of having had a long day, and by midnight he was again climbing over the wall of Isabella's villa.
He got home only a little before dawn, then slept late; but on getting up he found he had an hour to kill before he was due to wait upon the Marchesa di Santa Marco, so he set about exploring the ground floor of the Palazzo Sessa. To his surprise the whole of the south frontage and both wings consisted of one great suite of lofty chambers housing Sir William's collection of antiquities. The place was a veritable Aladdin's cave, and he determined that he must ask his host if he could spare the time to tell him about some of the treasures it contained.
The Santa Marco villa, where he spent the afternoon, was on the slope immediately below the western side of Vesuvius, and within a stone's throw of Herculaneum. Forty years earlier the systematic excavation of the buried Roman town had been begun by Don Carlos, and Roger would greatly have liked to see the remains; but his hostess, a large, lazy sloe-eyed woman in her early thirties, was evidently looking forward to spending the next couple of hours with her cavalier in the garden, as she quickly turned the conversation, and, even in this tolerant society, it would have looked too pointed had Roger and Isabella left her grounds on their own.
Nevertheless he saw Herculaneum, and also as much as had been excavated of Pompeii, later in the week under the most favourable circumstances. Sir William had willingly agreed to show him what he called "his lumber" and they spent the following morning together admiring bronze statuettes, graceful painted vases, curious amulets, mosaics, cameos and fragments of frescoes depicting life as it had been lived under the sway of Imperial Rome. It was while they were in the room that the Brothers Adam had specially designed to contain some of Sir William's most precious treasures that he said:
"In view of your interest, Mr. Brook, in this gracious civilization which so far surpasses anything that Christian nations have yet achieved, you must certainly devote a day to allowing me to show you the buried cities."
For Roger it was an awful moment; as he was torn between a longing not to miss such a chance, added to the difficulty of refusing Sir William's offer without rudeness and the appalling thought that acceptance would mean the loss of one of his few precious days with Isabella. But to such an old hand as Sir William the workings of Roger's young mind were transparent as glass, and while fingering some long gold pins that had once held up a Roman lady's hair, he went on casually:
"No doubt you have made some friends in Naples to whom you would like to return hospitality. Allow me to do so on your behalf. We will make up a party and I leave it to you to invite anyone you wish."
"You are too good to me, sir," Roger exclaimed with heart-felt gratitude. "The Prince and Princess Francavilla have shown me much kindness, and there is the Condesa Sidonia y Ulloa, with whom I was acquainted at the Court of France. . . ."
Sir William nodded. "So you met the dark-browed daughter of Conde d'Aranda there, eh? It increases my esteem for you, Mr. Brook, that you prefer the companionship of intelligent women. Pray ask her, then, and those charming Fancavillas, and anyone else to whom you have a mind. Emma, I am sure, will be delighted to have their company."
Then, to this delightful invitation, Sir William added what was to Roger a magnificent bonus. "A sloop arrived from Palermo late last night, bringing the news that instead of Their Majesties getting back here on Saturday, as was expected, they have decided to stay on over the weekend, so they will not now reach Naples until Tuesday. In view of the extra time this gives you, if your friends are agreeable, we might make our visit to Herculaneum and Pompeii on Sunday."
So on the Sunday a party of eight made an early start in two carriages with well-filled picnic baskets and the erudite Sir William as their cicerone. In vivid phrases he made five for them again the terrified inhabitants of the cities of the bay on the night of August 23rd, A.D. 79. Vesuvius had then been known as Mount La Somma and was less than half its present height. There had been earthquakes in the neighbourhood before, and a severe one sixteen years earlier which had thrown down some of the buildings in Pompeii; but they had since been rebuilt with greater beauty, and the 22,000 people who lived in the busy port had almost forgotten the occurrence.
At two o'clock in the morning everyone in the towns for miles along the coast had been alarmed by a terrible growling sound coming from underground. The sky was serene and sea calm, but by dawn it was seen that an enormous column of watery vapour was steaming up like a vast pine tree from the top of the mountain. As the morning advanced it grew and spread, assuming the form of a huge mushroom. For some time it remained suspended motionless in the air, a strange and terrifying sight, but endangering no one. Suddenly it burst and descended on the mountain sides in torrents of boiling rain. Gathering the soil in its progress it rushed down the slope towards the sea in the form of scalding mud and totally engulfed Herculaneum.
In a few hours the town had not only disappeared from the face of the earth, but was buried sixty feet below it. Such of the inhabitants as got away in time fled either to the little town of Neapolis, as Naples was then called, or to Pompeii. The former were inspired by the gods, as Neapolis sustained little damage, and up to eight o'clock in the evening it was thought that Pompeii would also be spared. But at that hour the eruption redoubled in violence, and the volcano began to throw up masses of molten stones. They struck against each other as they were vomited into the air with the roar of continuous thunder, and breaking into small fragments descended on the doomed city.
By two hours after midnight a mineral rain of red-hot stones, each no bigger than a pea, but in effect like a fiery hailstorm, was descending steadUy on Pompeii, burning and blistering everything it touched. Then after it, for hours on end, there fell hundreds of thousands of tons of calcined earth in the form of dust, and a black snow composed of ashes. The clouds laden with these soffocating components had spread far and wide, so that the whole terror occurred in pitch darkness. There now seemed no greater hope of safety in taking one way rather than another.
In wild confusion, patricians and plebeians, freedmen and slaves, priests, foreign traders, gladiators and courtesans ran backwards and forwards in frantic efforts to save themselves. Blindly they rushed into one another and into the walls of the houses they could no longer see. The heat was so stifling they could not get their breath. The sulphur fumes got into their eyes and lungs; the falling dust suffocated them, and thousands of them choked out their lives in agony.
The air for many hundreds of feet up was so thick with particles that the night seemed eternal. On the day that followed, the distraught people who had escaped with their lives did not even know that the sun had risen, and thought that it had been blotted out for ever. Even as far away as Rome day was turned into night, and the crowds wailed to the gods in panic, believing that the end of the world had come.
"That," Sir William told his guests, "is no figment of my own imagination, but almost the words in which this appalling catastrophe was described by cultured Roman men of letters, such as Pliny the Younger, who were actual eye-witnesses to these ghastly scenes."