Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/337

Rh We have, however, but little shade, nor is there much upon the island, but these verdant heights, valleys and pretty villas, and the vast surrounding sea, make it picturesque, un vero paradiso, as our host assures me. Mrs. M. is cheerful, kind, and full of animation and enterprise. She is the life of our trio; by land or by water and in the house, she has always some good little device or other, and endless are her resources; for which reason we call her La dame aux bonnes idées, for French is the language which unites us three travelers from different lands.

Our last glance every evening is to Vesuvius, the red lava streams of which we see gleam forth on the horizon. The eruption seems about at an end, but the great cone still adorns itself every day with a magnificent plume of heavy smoke-clouds.

June 20th.—The heat is so great and—I wonder whether flies and certain little hopping creatures were to be met with in the Paradise of Eden as in our paradise of Ischia. Most assuredly not, because in that case Adam and Eve would not have desired to go there, and there would have been no need of cherubim with a flaming sword to drive them out, a swarm alone of persevering flies such as we now have here would have been sufficient. Certain it is that they remove all possibility of the quiet enjoyment of life, for an incessant battle with flies is the most unavailing and the most intolerable of all warfare. Besides which, either owing to the still volcanic atmosphere of the island or of the Sirocco, daughter of the Simoom—the heat is now so oppressive, the light of the sun so burning, that they overcome me, poor child of the