Antiquity invades and absorbs us and, were it but for an hour, we are
Romans. That, however, is not all. I have already repeatedly said that
Vesuvius did not destroy Pompeii--it has preserved it.

The structures that have been exhumed crumble away in the air in a few
months--more than they had done beneath the ashes in eighteen centuries.
When first disinterred the painted walls reappear fresh and glowing as
though their coloring were but of yesterday. Each wall thus becomes, as
it were, a page of illustrated archeology, unveiling to us some point
hitherto unknown of the manners, customs, private habits, creeds and
traditions; or, to sum all up in a word, of the life of the ancients.

The furniture one finds, the objects of art or the household utensils,
reveal to us the mansion; there is not a single panel which, when
closely examined, does not tell us something. Such and such a pillar has
retained the inscription scratched upon it with the point of his knife
by a Pompeian who had nothing else to do; such a piece of wall on the
street set apart for posters, presents in huge letters the announcement
of a public spectacle, or proclaims the candidature of some citizen for
a contested office of the state.

I say nothing of the skeletons, whose attitudes relate, in a most
striking manner, the horrors of the catastrophe and the frantic
struggles of the last moment. In fine, for any one who has the faculty
of observation, every step is a surprise, a discovery, a confession won
concerning the public and private life of the ancients. Although at
first sight mute, these blocks of stone, when interrogated, soon speak
and confide their secrets to science or to the imagination that catches
a meaning with half a word; they tell, little by little, all that they
know, and all the strange, mysterious things that took place on these