After admiring in the museum of the abbey the artistic souvenirs of the Bourbon domination and that of Murat, they entered into a nearby _trattoria_ with tables placed on an esplanade from whose balconies they could take in the unforgetable spectacle of the gulf, seeing Vesuvius in the distance and the chain of mountains smoking on the horizon like an immovable succession of dark rose-colored waves.
Naples was extended in horseshoe form on the bow-shaped border of the sea tossing up from its enormous white mass, as though they were bits of foam, the clusters of houses in the suburbs.
A swarthy oysterman, slender, with eyes like live coals, and enormous mustaches, had his stand at the door of the restaurant, offering cockles and shell fish of strong odor that had been half a week perhaps in ascending from the city to the heights of Vomero.

Freya jested about the oysterman's typical good looks and the languishing glances that he was forever casting toward all the ladies that entered the establishment ...

a prime discovery for a tourist anxious for adventures in local color.
In the background a small orchestra was accompanying a tenor voice or was playing alone, enlarging upon the melodies and amplifying the measures with Neapolitan exaggeration.
Freya felt a childish hilarity upon seating herself at the table, seeing over the cloth the luminous summit.

Bisected in the foreground by a crystal vase full of flowers, the distant panorama of the city, the gulf, and its capes spread itself before her eager eyes.

The air on this peak enchanted her after two weeks passed without stirring outside of Naples.