Chapter 45

The ruins of Pompei are near to Mount Vesuvius, and Corinne and Lord Neville began their excursion with these ruins. They were both silent; for the moment approached which was to decide their fate, and that vague hope they had so long enjoyed, and which accords so well with the indolence and reverie that the climate of Italy inspires, was to be replaced by a positive destiny. They visited Pompei together, the most curious ruin of antiquity. At Rome, seldom any thing is found but the remains of public monuments, and these monuments only retrace the political history of past ages; but at Pompei it is the private life of the ancients which offers itself to the view, such as it was. The Volcano, which has covered this city with ashes, has preserved it from the destroying hand of Time. Edifices, exposed to the air, never could have remained so perfect; but this hidden relic of antiquity was found entire. The paintings and bronzes were still in their pristine beauty; and every thing connected with domestic life is fearfully preserved. The amphoræ are yet prepared for the festival of the following day; the flour which was to be kneaded is still to be seen; the remains of a woman, are still decorated with those ornaments which she wore on the holiday that the Volcano disturbed, and her calcined arms no longer fill the bracelets of precious stones which still surround them. Nowhere is to be seen so striking an image of the sudden interruption of life. The traces of the wheels are visible in the streets, and the stones on the brink of the wells bear the mark of the cord which has gradually furrowed them. On the walls of a guardhouse are still to be seen those misshapen characters, those figures rudely sketched, which the soldiers traced to pass away the time, while Time was hastily advancing to swallow them up.

When we place ourselves in the midst of the crossroads from which the city that remains standing almost entire is seen on all sides, it seems to us as if we were waiting for somebody, as if the master were coming; and even the appearance of life which this abode offers makes us feel more sadly its eternal silence. It is with petrified lava that the greater part of these houses are built, which are now swallowed up by other lava. Thus ruins are heaped upon ruins, and tombs upon tombs. This history of the world, where the epochs are counted from ruin to ruin, this picture of human life, which is only lighted up by the Volcanoes that have consumed it, fill the heart with a profound melancholy. How long man has existed! How long he has suffered and died! Where can we find his sentiments and his thoughts? Is the air that we breathe in these ruins impregnated with them, or are they for ever deposited in heaven where reigns immortality? Some burnt leaves of manuscripts, which have been found at Herculaneum, and Pompei, and which scholars at Portici are employed to decipher, are all that remain to give us information of those unhappy victims, whom the Volcano, that thunder-bolt of earth, has destroyed. But in passing near those ashes, which art has succeeded in reanimating, we are afraid to breathe lest a breath should carry away that dust where noble ideas are perhaps still imprinted.

The public edifices in the city itself of Pompei, which was one of the least important of Italy, are yet tolerably fine. The luxury of the ancients had almost ever some object of public interest for its aim. Their private houses are very small, and we do not see in them any studied magnificence, though we may remark a lively taste for the fine arts in their possessors. Almost the whole interior is adorned with the most agreeable paintings and mosaic pavements ingeniously worked. On many of these pavements is written the word _Salve_. This word is placed on the threshold of the door, and must not be simply considered as a polite expression, but as an invocation of hospitality. The rooms are singularly narrow, and badly lighted; the windows do not look on the street, but on a portico inside the house, as well as a marble court which it surrounds. In the midst of this court is a cistern, simply ornamented. It is evident from this kind of habitation that the ancients lived almost entirely in the open air, and that it was there they received their friends. Nothing gives us a more sweet and voluptuous idea of existence than this climate, which intimately unites man with nature; we should suppose that the character of their conversation and their society, ought, with such habits, to be different from those of a country where the rigour of the cold forces the inhabitants to shut themselves up in their houses. We understand better the Dialogues of Plato in contemplating those porches under which the ancients walked during one half of the day. They were incessantly animated by the spectacle of a beautiful sky: social order, according to their conceptions, was not the dry combination of calculation and force, but a happy assemblage of institutions, which stimulated the faculties, unfolded the soul, and directed man to the perfection of himself and his equals.

Antiquity inspires an insatiable curiosity. Those men of erudition who are occupied only in forming a collection of names which they call history, are certainly divested of all imagination. But to penetrate the remotest periods of the past, to interrogate the human heart through the intervening gloom of ages, to seize a fact by the help of a word, and by the aid of that fact to discover the character and manners of a nation; in effect, to go back to the remotest time, to figure to ourselves how the earth in its first youth appeared to the eyes of man, and in what manner the human race then supported the gift of existence which civilization has now rendered so complicated, is a continual effort of the imagination, which divines and discovers the finest secrets that reflection and study can reveal to us. This occupation of the mind Oswald found most fascinating, and often repeated to Corinne that if he had not been taken up with the noblest interests in his own country, he could only have found life supportable in those parts where the monuments of history supply the place of present existence. We must at least regret glory when it is no longer possible to obtain it. It is forgetfulness alone that debases the soul; but it may find an asylum in the past, when barren circumstances deprive actions of their aim.

On leaving Pompei and returning to Portici, Corinne and Lord Nelville were surrounded by the inhabitants, who cried to them loudly to come and see _the mountain_; so they call _Vesuvius_. Is it necessary to name it? It is the glory of the Neapolitans and the object of their patriotic feelings; their country is distinguished by this phenomenon. Oswald had Corinne carried in a kind of palanquin as far as the hermitage of St Salvador, which is half way up the mountain, and where travellers repose before they undertake to climb the summit. He rode by her side to watch those who carried her, and the more his heart was filled with the generous thoughts that nature and history inspire, the more he adored Corinne.

At the foot of Vesuvius the country is the most fertile and best cultivated that can be found in the kingdom of Naples, that is to say, in the country of Europe most favoured of heaven. The celebrated vine, whose wine is called _Lacryma Christi_, grows in this spot, and by the side of lands which have been laid waste by the lava. One would say that nature has made a last effort in this spot, so near the Volcano, and has decked herself in her richest attire before her death. In proportion as we ascend the mountain, we discover on turning round, Naples, and the beautiful country that surrounds it. The rays of the sun make the sea sparkle like precious stones; but all the splendour of the creation is extinguished by degrees as we approach the land of ashes and smoke which announces the vicinity of the Volcano. The ferruginous lava of preceding years has traced in the earth deep and sable furrows, and all around them is barren. At a certain height not a bird is seen to fly, at another, plants become very scarce, then even the insects find nothing to subsist on in the arid soil. At length every living thing disappears; you enter the empire of death, and the pulverised ashes alone roll beneath your uncertain feet.

Nè griggi nè armenti Guida bifolco, mai guida pastore

_Neither flocks nor herds does the husbandman or the shepherd ever guide to this spot._

Here dwells a hermit on the confines of life and death. A tree, the last farewell of vegetation, grows before his door: and it is beneath the shadow of its pale foliage that travellers are accustomed to wait the approach of night, to continue their route; for during the day, the fires of Vesuvius are only perceived like a cloud of smoke, and the lava, so bright and burning in the night, appears black before the beams of the sun. This metamorphosis itself is a fine spectacle, which renews every evening that astonishment which the continuity of the same aspect might weaken. The impression of this spot and its profound solitude, gave Lord Nelville more resolution to reveal the secrets of his soul; and desiring to excite the confidence of Corinne, he said to her with the most lively emotion:--"You wish to read the inmost soul of your unhappy friend; well, I will tell you all: I feel my wounds are about to bleed afresh; but ought we, in this desolate scene of nature, to dread so much those sufferings which Time brings in its course?"

PRINTED BY TURNBULL AND SPEARS, EDINBURGH.

End of Project Gutenberg's Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2), by Mme de Stael