Words fell flat, like bits of ice, without finding any echo in their fall.  At each turn of the wheel, the imposing lady became more reserved and silent.  Everything had been said.  They, too, were going to remain in Salerno in order to take a carriage-trip along the gulf.  They were going to Amalfi and would pass the night on the Alpine peak of Ravello, a medieval city where Wagner had passed the last months of his life, before dying in Venice.  Then, passing over to the Gulf of Naples, they would rest in Sorrento and perhaps might go to the island of Capri.

Ulysses wished to say that his line of march was exactly the same, but he was afraid of the doctor.  Furthermore, their trip was to be in a vehicle which they had already rented and they would not offer him a seat.

Freya appeared to surmise his sadness and wished to console him.

“It is a short trip.  No more than three days....  Soon we shall be in Naples.”

The farewell in Salerno was brief.  The doctor was careful not to mention their stopping-place.  For her, the friendship was ending then and there.

“It is probable that we shall run across each other again,” she said laconically.  “It is only the mountains that never meet.”

Her young companion was more explicit, mentioning the hotel on the shores of S. Lucia in which she lodged.

Standing by the step of the carriage, he saw them take their departure, just as he had seen them appear in a street of Pompeii.  The doctor was lost behind a screen of glass, talking with the coachman who had come to meet them.  Freya, before disappearing, turned to give him a faint smile and then raised her gloved hand with a stiff forefinger, threatening him just as though he were a mischievous and bold child.

Finding himself alone in the compartment that was carrying toward Naples the traces and perfumes of the absent one, Ulysses felt as downcast as though he were returning from a burial, as if he had just lost one of the props of his life.

His appearance on board the Mare Nostrum was regarded as a calamity.  He was capricious and intractable, complaining of Toni and the other two officials because they were not hastening repairs on the vessel.  In the same breath he said it would be better not to hurry things too much, so that the job would be better done.  Even Caragol was the victim of his bad humor which flamed forth in the form of cruel sermons against those addicted to the poison of alcohol.

“When men need to be cheered up, they have to have something better than wine.  That which brings greater ecstasy than drink ... is woman, Uncle Caragol.  Don’t forget this counsel!”

Through mere force of habit the cook replied, “That is so, my captain....”  But down in his heart he was pitying the ignorance of those men who concentrate all their happiness on the whims and grimaces of this most frivolous of toys.