His footsteps resounded in the sunlight as though treading the depths of the hollow tombs.

The moment he stopped, silence again enveloped him,--"A silence of two thousand years," thought Ferragut to himself, and in the midst of this primeval silence sounded far-away voices in the violence of a sharp discussion.

They were the guardians and the employees of the excavations who, lacking work, were gesticulating and insulting each other in these strongholds twenty centuries old so profoundly isolated from patriotic enthusiasm or fear of the horrors of war.
Ferragut, map in hand, passed among these groups without annoyance from insistent guides.

For two hours he fancied himself an inhabitant of ancient Pompeii who had remained alone in the city on a holiday devoted to the rural divinities.

His glance could reach to the very end of the straight streets without encountering persons or things recalling modern times.
Pompeii appeared to him smaller than ever in this solitude,--an intersection of narrow roads with high sidewalks paved with polygonal blocks of blue lava.