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Updated: June 6, 2025
Becky, while she was finishing her interrupted dejeuner a la fourchette. How was it that she had come to that little town? How was it that she had no friends and was wandering about alone? Little boys at school are taught in their earliest Latin book that the path of Avernus is very easy of descent. Let us skip over the interval in the history of her downward progress.
This was the sudden birth of the mountain still known as Monte Nuovo, or New Mountain, which was thrown up in the Campania near Avernus, on the spot formerly occupied by the Lucrine Lake. For about two years prior to this event the district had been disturbed by earthquakes, which on September 27 and 28, 1538, became almost continuous.
In the hollow rock under the very walls of the town was situated the cavern of the Sibyl; and in the immediate neighborhood stood the wild woods and dark lake of Avernus, consecrated to the subterranean gods, and offering an establishment of priests, with ceremonies evoking the dead, for purposes of prophecy or for solving doubts and mysteries.
"You are very kind, Doctor, but I devote to-day to Avernus, Cumæ, and the infernal gods. Next week I shall bask at Baiæ. Gentlemen, I bid you good-day, and a pleasant hour over your Falernian." She turned once more to the mysterious solemn face of that wonderful legendary blue bay, and the light died out of her countenance, as in a room where the lamps are unexpectedly extinguished.
Now too my mind rests the same; dismiss thy fear. In safety, as thou desirest, shall he reach the haven of Avernus. One will there be alone whom on the flood thou shalt lose and require; one life shall be given for many. . . . With these words the goddess' bosom is soothed to joy.
As Sennelager vanished from sight my companion and I gave deep sighs of relief. We felt that we had left Hell behind. It was two o'clock in the afternoon when I saw the last of Sennelager Camp as the train swung round a curve which blotted the Avernus over which Major Bach reigned supreme from sight if not from memory.
Here was the haunt of the sybarites, whose gay barks skimmed the shallow waters of the Lucrine lake; and not far off slumbered in its volcanic hollow that other lake, Avernus, renowned in legend and poetry, through whose caverns, fable had it, lay the entrance to the world of the dead.
Be this as it may, it was humanly impossible for such a vast country with such vast resources in men and raw materials to remain permanently quiescent during an universal conflagration when there was so much to be salvaged. Slowly the idea became general in China that something had to be done; that is that a state of technical neutrality would lead nowhere save possibly to Avernus.
There was nothing to do but agree, and I was glad that I had been discreetly reticent about my companion in talking with the friend who was to gain us entrance to the Avernus beyond the steel door. We met my friend at the Riviera and dined sumptuously.
This region, which is still shaky from fires bubbling under the thin crust, through which here and there the sulphurous vapor breaks out, is one of the most sacred in the ancient world. Here are the Lucrine Lake, the Elysian Fields, the cave of the Cumean Sibyl, and the Lake Avernus.
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