Arria Marcclla.
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��no longer existed, his voice was none the less full and resonant.
The guide conducted them across the agricultural land to the amphithea- tre, situated at the extremity of the town. They walked under trees whose branches hung over into the now roof- less houses. Among these marvels of art grew vulgar vegetables, a reminder of the forgetfulness with which time covers the most beautiful things.
The amphitheatre did not surprise them. They had seen the one at Ve- rona, more vast and better preserved ; and they knew the arrangement of these ancient arenas as well as they knew their native land. They then re- turned by way of the rue de la Fortune, listening absently to the guide, who gave the name of each house as they passed it. Each one was named for some peculiarity : the house of the Bronze Bull, the house of the Faun, the house of Fortune, the Academy of Music, the Pharmacy, the Surgeon's Office, the house of the Vestal Virgins, the inn of Albinus, and so on to the door which leads to the tombs.
This brick door, covered with bas- reliefs now effaced, has on its inner side two deep grooves through which the portcullis was raised.
"Who would have expected," said Max to his friends, " to see at Pompeii a door fit for the romantic age of chivalry? Imagine a Roman cavalier sounding his horn before this door for them to raise the portcullis, like a knight of the fourteenth century ! "
"There is nothing new under the sun," continued Octavio, smihng with melancholy irony.
" My dear Octavio," said Max, stop- ping before an inscription on a wall, " would you like to see a combat in the arena? Here are the notices : —
��COMBAT AND CHASE ON THE FIFTH OF APRIL.
Twenty pairs of Gladiators will fight ; and, if you are afraid of your complexion, re-assure yourself, for there will be curtains overhead; unless you prefer to go early in the morning, and then in your hurry you will cut your throat with your knife, and will not be the happier."
In examinations of this sort the three friends passed along the edge of the tombs, which in our modern times are a lugubrious spectacle, but which were the contrary for the ancients, whose tombs, instead of a horrible corpse, contained only a mass of cinders, the abstract idea of death. Art embellished these relics ; and, as Goethe said, " The pagans decorated their tombs with the representations of life."
It was this, no doubt, that made Max and Fabio look upon them with such gayety and light curiosity, — a feeling which they would not have had in one of our cemeteries. They stopped be- fore the tomb of Mammia, the public priestess, near which grows a poplar ; they sat down near it, laughing like her- etics ; they lazily read the epitaphs of Nevoleja, and of the family of Arria, followed by Octavio, who seemed more touched than his companions by these souvenirs of past centuries.
At last they arrived at the house of Arrius Diomedes, one of the most important in Pompeii. They mounted the brick steps ; and, when they had entered the door flanked by two lateral cohmins, they found themselves in a sort of court, like those in the centre of a Spanish house ; fourteen coluinns of brick covered with stucco-work formed the four sides of a portico or covered peristyle, under Avhich one could move about without fear of the rain. The pavement of this court is a mosaic of brick and white marble, hav-
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