"Every morning,çoisRené so soon as dawn began to appear, I went under a portico.... The sun rose before me... it illumined with its tenderest fires the mountain-chain of Salernum[426], the blue sea studded with the white sails of the fishermen, the islands of Capræ[427], Œnaria[428], Prochyta[429]... the cape of Misenum[430] and Baiæ[431] with all its enchantments.
"Flowers and fruits moist with dew are less sweet and less fresh than the Neapolitan landscape emerging from the shades of night. I was always surprised, on reaching the portico, to find myself beside the sea; for the waves in that spot scarce gave forth a fountain's gentle murmur. In an ecstasy before that picture, I leant against a pillar and, void of thoughts, desires, or plans, remained whole hours breathing a delicious air. The charm was so intense that it seemed to me that that divine air was transforming my own substance, and that, with an unspeakable pleasure, I was rising towards the firmament like a pure spirit....
"To await or go in search of beauty; to see her come towards us in a wherry and smile to us from amid the waves; to float with her on the sea, while strewing its surface with flowers; to follow the enchantress into the recesses of that wood of myrtles and into the fortunate fields where Virgil set Elysium; that was the occupation of our days.... Perhaps there are climates dangerous to virtue through their extreme voluptuousness. And is it not this that an ingenious fable strove to teach, when telling that Parthenope[432] was built upon a syren's tomb? The velvet brilliancy of the country-side, the lukewarm temperature of the air, the rounded outlines of the mountains, the soft inflexions of the streams and valleys form at Naples so many seductions for the senses, which everything tends to rest, nothing to wound....
"To escape the noonday heat, we would retire to that part of the palace built under the sea. Stretched on beds of ivory, we listened to the murmuring of the waves above our heads. If some storm surprised us down in these retreats, the slaves brought us lamps filled with the most precious nard of Araby. Then entered young Neapolitan girls, bearing roses of Pæstum in vases of Nola; while the billows moaned without, they sang, performing tranquil dances before us which reminded me of the manners of Greece: thus were realized for us the fictions of the poets; we seemed in Neptune's cave to be watching the sports of the Nereids[433]."