The band plays near the Aquarium, which I hope the
reader will visit at the earlier hours of the day.
Then, if he has a passion for polyps, and wishes to
imagine how they could ingulf good-sized ships in the
ages of fable, he can see one of the hideous things
float from its torpor in the bottom of its tank, and
seize Avith its hungry tentacles the food lowered
to it by a string. Still awfuller is it to see
it rise and reach with those prehensile members, as
with the tails of a multi-caudate ape, some rocky
projection of its walls and lurk fearsomely into the
hollow, and vanish there in a loathly quiescence.
The carnivorous spray and bloom of the deep-sea flowers
amid which drowned men’s “bones are coral
made” seem of one temperament with the polyps
as they slowly, slowly wave their tendrils and petals;
but there is amusement if not pleasure in store for
the traveller who turns from them to the company of
shad softly and continuously circling in their tank,
and regarding the spectators with a surly dignity
becoming to people in better society than others.
One large shad, imaginably of very old family and
independent property, sails at the head of several
smaller shad, his flatterers and toadies, who try
to look like him. Mostly his expression is very
severe; but in milder moments he offers a perverse
resemblance to some portraits of Washington.
All our days in Naples died like dolphins to the music
which I have tried to impart the sense of. The
joyful noises which it was made up of culminated for
us on that evening when a company of the street and
boat musicians came into the hotel and danced and
sang and played the tarantella. They were of
all ages, sexes, and bulks, and of divers operatic
costumes, but they were of one temperament only, which
was glad and childlike. They went through their
repertory, which included a great deal more than the
tarantella, and which we applauded with an enthusiasm
attested by our contributions when the tambourine went
round. Then they repeated their selections, and
at the second collection we guests of the hotel repeated
our contributions, but in a more guarded spirit.
After the second repetition the prettiest girl came
round with her photographs and sold them at prices
out of all reason. Then we became very melancholy,
and began to steal out one by one. I myself did
not stay for the fourth collection, and I cannot report
how the different points of view, the Southern and
the Northern, were reconciled in the event which I
am not sure was final. But I am sure that unless
you can make allowance for a world-wide difference
in the Neapolitans from yourself you can never understand
them. Perhaps you cannot, even then.
V
POMPEII REVISITED
Copyrights
Roman Holidays, and Others from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
