In the kind of eating-house that suited his mood, an obscure _bettola_ probably never yet patronized by Englishman, he sat down to a dish of maccheroni and a bottle of red wine.

At another table were some boatmen, who, after greeting him, went on with their lively talk in a dialect of which he could understand but few words.
Having eaten well and drunk still better, he lit a cigar and sauntered forth to find a place for dreaming.

Chance led him to the patch of public garden, with its shrubs and young palm-trees, which looks over the little port.

Here, when once he had made it clear to a succession of rhetorical boatmen that he was not to be tempted on to the sea, he could sit as idly and as long as he liked, looking across the sapphire bay and watching the bright sails glide hither and thither With the help of sunlight and red wine, he could imagine that time had gone back twenty centuries--that this was not Pozzuoli, but Puteoli; that over yonder was not Baia, but Baiae; that the men among the shipping talked to each other in Latin, and perchance of the perishing Republic.
But Mallard's fancy would not dwell long in remote ages As he watched the smoke curling up from his cigar, he slipped back into the world of his active being, and made no effort to obscure the faces that looked upon him.

They were those of his mother and sisters, thought of whom carried him to the northern island, now grim, cold, and sunless beneath its lowering sky.