We went one evening to the opera at San Carlo.  It is one of the three theatres—­San Carlo of Naples, La Scala of Milan, and Fenice of Venice—­on which the Italians pride themselves; and it is certainly very large and imposing.  The interior has a bel colpo d’occhio, which is what many Italians chiefly value in morals, manners, and architecture; but after this comes great shabbiness of detail.  The boxes, even of the first order, are paved with brick tiles, and the red velvet border of the box which the people see from the pit is not supported in style by the seats within, which are merely covered with red oil-cloth.  The opera we saw was also second-rate, and was to the splendor of the scenic arrangements what the oil-cloth was to the velvet.  The house was full of people, but the dress of the audience was not so fine as we had expected in Naples.  The evening dress is not de rigueur at Italian theatres, and people seemed to have come to San Carlo in any pleasant carelessness of costume.

VII.

The Italians are simple and natural folks, pleased through all their show of conventionality with little things, and as easy and unconscious as children in their ways.  There happened to be a new caffe opened in Naples while we were there, and we had the pleasure of seeing all ranks of people affected by its magnificence.  Artless throngs blocked the sidewalk day and night before its windows, gazing upon its mirrors, fountains, and frescos, and regarding the persons over their coffee within as beings lifted by sudden magic out of the common orbit of life and set dazzling in a higher sphere.  All the waiters were uniformed and brass-buttoned to blinding effect, and the head waiter was a majestic creature in a long blue coat reaching to his feet, and armed with a mighty silver-headed staff.  This gorgeous apparition did nothing but walk up and down, and occasionally advance toward the door, as if to disperse the crowds.  At such times, however, before executing his purpose, he would glance round on the splendors they were admiring, and, as if smitten with a sense of the enormous cruelty he had meditated in thinking to deprive them of the sight, would falter and turn away, leaving his intent unfulfilled.

VIII.

A DAY IN POMPEII.

I.

On the second morning after our arrival in Naples, we took the seven o’clock train, which leaves the Nineteenth Century for the first cycle of the Christian Era, and, skirting the waters of the Neapolitan bay almost the whole length of our journey, reached the railway station of Pompeii in an hour.  As we rode along by that bluest sea, we saw the fishing-boats go out, and the foamy waves (which it would be an insolent violence to call breakers) come in; we saw the mountains slope their tawny and golden manes caressingly downward to the waters, where the islands were dozing yet; and landward, on the left, we saw Vesuvius, with his brown mantle of ashes drawn close about his throat, reclining on the plain, and smoking a bland and thoughtful morning pipe, of which the silver fumes curled lightly, lightly upward in the sunrise.