ESTATE OF POMPEII
119
sang Signor Salacci, "and the walls lacquered red and then waxed,
with Mrika leopard, and an erotic frieze-"
"They had torches burning so that the inside of this room was
in
red light to make everyone excited," Tansy was explaining to Roder–
ick, who'd been standing at a little distance. "But in contrast to
this
the garden was all in white marble, with cool fountains playing and
open to the moonlight."
"Usually gave these orgy feasts to the full moon," the guide
mused nostalgically.
"And during these orgy feasts?"
"Slaves had to pray for them-" they had arrived at a shrine
to the household golds, the Lares and Penates (how would their
old kettle be, their stove, Tansy's copper pans?) "For bachelors had,"
he said devoutly, "too much to do bachelor."
The guide was now opening the padlock on an oblong wooden
cover, that he folded back to reveal, momentarily, an oblong framed
picture, about eighteen inches long, and a foot wide, evidently of
some kind of unusual Cyrano de Bergerac, painted (and from all
appearances quite recently subtly improved upon in Marseilles)
in black, ochre and red, of a Cyrano engaged in weighing, it seemed
at first sight, upon a sort of Safeway scale,
his
nose, which emitted
curious carmine sparkles: "Where there is money, there is art, there
is taste, there is intelligence, there is perdition, there is fight-that
is Pompeii!" glowed Signor Salacci, turning the key in the padlock
again upon this jealously preserved and athletic relic.
"I always heard there was a reproduction of the Screw Of
Archimedes in Pompeii," Roderick observed, "but I thought he
worked it with his feet."
"But I don't understand about the windows, Rod," Tansy was
giggling, perhaps to conceal her embarrassment, or her embarrassment
at evincing before the guide that she was one in whom a natural
innocence and decency was combined with a restrained yet whole–
heartedly Rabelaisian appreciation.
"Well, it's just as he said, Tansy dear. There aren't any bloody
windows, or rather there weren't. Just as the walls weren't marble,
but covered with stucco imitation of marble facing. They're simply
paintings of windows to give the impression you're looking through
a real window." Roderick filled
his
pipe. "Of course according to
