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like...well, it’s like someone snoring.”
    Hugh gave him a look. “Someone snoring? You’re imagining things.”
    Vesuvius’s rumble recommenced, and Gervase heard nothing more.
    Hugh bent to dip his hand in the pool to drink, and as he did so, something in the depths caught his eyes. “Good God,” he gasped, staring down.
    “What is it?”
    “There’s something down there—I can see it glittering. There are colors—red, green, blue.” Hugh straightened excitedly. “The diadem! Gervase, it’s the diadem!”
    “Hugh, you’re still in your cups, there is no diadem.”
    Hugh pointed into the pool. “Look down there and still say that,” he challenged.
    With a sigh Gervase obeyed, and to his astonishment saw a small rainbow of iridescent colors that had nothing to do with the stars.
    Hugh clutched his shoulder excitedly. “You have to go down for it, Gervase!”
    “Me?”
    “Yes, you can dive better than I can, and besides, we both know I’m less than sober.”
    “Yes, but...”
    “Do it, Gervase, otherwise we’ll never know. What if it is Ariadne’s diadem?”
    Gervase hesitated, but then began to unbutton his greatcoat. The dawn air made him shudder as he undressed, but he knew Hugh was right—unless they examined it in full now, they would wonder ever after what it had been. Taking a deep breath, he dove into the icy water, cutting the surface so cleanly that he hardly made a sound.
    Down and down he swam, his skin taut with the shock of the cold. His lungs felt as if they would burst by the time he was within reach of the enticing little rainbow. His questing fingers closed over a hard, intricate surface that was wedged tightly between two rocks. He tugged, and at first it wouldn’t budge, but suddenly it came away in his hand, and he kicked for the surface.
    He burst up into the pale gray air again, waving the trophy aloft, then swam to the bank to toss it onto the grass at Hugh’s feet. There Ariadne’s diadem lay, its gold gleaming, its precious stones ablaze in the early light. It was still perfect, as if it had fallen in the water but a few minutes earlier.
    Hugh stared at it, then looked incredulously at Gervase, who was still in the water. “Dear God above...” he breathed.
    Gervase stared at it, too. The magnificent craftsmanship was ancient, and it was studded with jewels so rare that he could not begin to identify some of them. Even if it wasn’t the wedding crown that had slipped from Ariadne’s dying fingers, it was certainly a priceless treasure from the time of the Romans.
    Hugh picked it up with trembling hands. “Sweet Jesu,” he whispered, his eyes gleaming with anticipation of the fortune such an item would fetch.
    Gervase reached up to him. “Help me out,” he said.
    Hugh hardly heard, for excitement suddenly bubbled so irrepressibly through him that he laughed and gave a loud whoop of triumph.
    The sound echoed around the grove, awakening Sylvanus in his hiding place among the roots of a tree. The faun sat up sharply on his snug bed of leaves, and in the process banged his little horns and pointed ears on a protruding root. For a moment his rather comical face was a picture of sleepy confusion, but then his dreams of the pursuit and ravishment of nymphs fled, as with a start he realized that the diadem he was supposed to guard with his life was in danger. He should have been lying in wait for the two Englishmen, not sleeping! With a bleat of dismay and fury he scrambled out into the dawn-lit grove, making so much noise that both men heard.
    Hugh thought he saw one of the lazzaroni in costume, but Gervase’s lips parted as he beheld the creature with the head and upper body of a man, and the legs and tail of a goat. Since the night began he had seen revelers dressed this way, but this was no disguise; what he was seeing now was the real thing!
    Still bleating, Sylvanus scampered toward Hugh, his hands outstretched to grab the diadem. In the brief ensuing grapple,