On they pass by the beautiful church of St. Giovanni, the statues on the roof and over the portico of which have at least one point of resemblance with their saintly prototypes--they are standing out there in the clear blue heavens, to which, and not to the earth, they seem to belong. At the Port Sebastian they are detained by a string of wine-carts, each drawn by one horse, with his plume of black feathers on his head, and each cart furnished with its goatskin umbrella, under the shade of which the driver lies fast asleep. Then follow a long cavalcade of peasants, mounted on mules or asses--_mounted_ of a truth, for they sit on a high wooden saddle, their arms folded under their long brown cloaks, and a black pointed hat upon their heads. Strange figures!
"A flower in _that_ hat!" exclaimed Mildred, as one passed her with a beautiful carnation stuck into a beaver, which, except that it retained its pyramidal form, and was there upon a human head, could not have been recognised as _hat_ at all. "And he wears it seriously," she continued, "serenely--without the least feeling of incongruity. Oh, I like that!"
Getting clear of this train, they advanced through the gate into the open country. To their left the old aqueduct extended on the horizon its long line of ruined arches; to the right the plain was dotted with mere massive fragments of undistinguishable ruin, looking like what the geologists call boulders. The trace of man's labour was lost in them; the work of the artificer had come to resemble the rudest accident of Nature.
"Is that smoke or a cloud," asked Miss Bloomfield, "that rests so constantly upon that mountain?"
"It is Vesuvius! Vesuvius!" exclaimed the rest of the party.
But they found themselves in a position, at that moment, the least of all favourable to enthusiastic emotions. Their carriage was delayed at the entrance into Naples, in the middle of a wide road, the hottest and the dustiest that can be imagined. There they were arrested to undergo the examination and the extortions of the custom-house gentry. Poor Mr. Bloomfield was in a fever. His passport had been asked for six several times between Rome and Naples, and each time solely, as it seemed, to extract a gratuity. Even the military guard stationed at the gates of the towns had begged. No one in Italy seemed to speak to him but to beg, or to _lay the foundation_, as a lawyer would say, for a begging question. And now these fellows were examining, or pretending to examine his baggage, and were evidently resolved to keep them there, in the sun and the dust, till they had paid a sufficient ransom. In this position it was that Winston and Mildred were, by stolen glances, taking their first survey of the burning mountain. By stolen glances, because they were compelled from a certain feeling of politeness to share in the anxieties and chagrin of Mr. Bloomfield. For themselves, they both agreed it was much better to submit quietly, and at once, to all these impositions; even if there were a fair chance, after much controversy, of a successful resistance. There is surely no money so well laid out as that which purchases equanimity.