CHAPTER X.
CASTELLAMMARE: ITS WOODS, ITS FOLKLORE AND THE TALE OF THE MADONNA OF POZZANO
"Marzo è pazzo" ("March is mad") say the Neapolitans, contemptuous of his inconstancies. God forbid that I should try to prove the sanity of March; but it is long odds if April is one whit the better. His moon is in its first quarter, and still sirocco blows up out of the sea day by day. The grey clouds drift in banks across Vesuvius and hide the pillar of his smoke, dropping down at whiles even to the level of the plain. From time to time it is as if the mountain stirred and shook himself, flinging off the weight of vapour from his flanks and crest, so that again one can see the rolling column of dense smoke, stained and discoloured by the reflection of the fires far down within the cone, now rosy, now a menacing dull brown which is easily distinguishable from the watery clouds that gather in the heavens. Yet slowly, steadily the veil of mist returns, while mine host murmurs ruefully, "Sette Aprilanti, giorni quaranta!" But it is not the seventh of April yet, so we may still be spared the sight of dripping trees for forty days. An hour ago, when I ventured up the hill towards the woods, a tattered, copper-coloured varlet of a boy looked out of the cellar where his mother was stooping over the smoking coals in her brass chafing-dish. "Aprile chiuove, chiuove," he bawled, as if it were the greatest news in the world. He thinks the harvest will be mended by the April rains; though if he and others in this region knew whence their true harvest comes, they would humbly supplicate our Lady of Pozzano to give fine weather to the visitors.
To be stayed at the gate of the Sorrento peninsula by doubtful weather is by no means an unmixed misfortune. It may be that our Lady of Pozzano sometimes employs the showers to bring hasty travellers to a better way of thinking. Certainly many people hurry past Castellammare to their own hurt. The town is unattractive, and may, moreover, be reproached with wickedness, though it suffers, as is said, from the low morality of Greek sailors, rather than from any crookedness of its homeborn citizens. But the mountain slopes behind it are immensely beautiful. No woods elsewhere in the peninsula are comparable to these. No other drives show views so wide and exquisite framed in such a setting of fresh spring foliage, nor is there upon these shores an hotel more comfortable or more homelike than the "Quisisana," which stands near the entrance of the woods; and this I say with confidence, though not unaware that the judgments of travellers upon hotels are as various as their verdicts on a pretty woman, who at one hour of the day is ten times prettier than at another, and may now and then look positively plain.
Castellammare possesses an excellent sea-front, which would have made a pleasant promenade had not a selfish little tramway seized upon the side next the shore, guarding itself by a high railing from the intrusion of strangers in search of cool fresh air. Thus cast back on a line of dead walls, house-fronts as mean as only a fourth-rate Italian town can boast, one has no other amusement than gazing at the mountains, which in truth are beautiful enough for anyone. Very steep and high they tower above Castellammare; not brown and purple, as when I looked up at them across the broken walls of Pompeii, but clad in their true colours of green of every shade, dark and sombre where ravines are chiselled out upon the slopes, or where the pines lie wet and heavy in the morning shadow. Higher up, the flanks of the mountains are rough with brushwood, while on the summits the clear air blows about bare grass deepening into brown. Sometimes sloping swiftly to the sea, but more often dropping in sheer cliffs of immense height, this dark and shadowy mountain wall thrusts itself out across the blue waters, while here and there a village gleams white upon some broken hillside, or a monastery rears its red walls among the soft grey of the olive woods. There lies Vico, on its promontory rock, showing at this distance only the shade of its great beauty; and beyond the next lofty headland is Sorrento, at the foot of a mountain country so exquisite, so odorous with myrtle and with rosemary, so fragrant of tradition and romance, that it is, as I said, a good fortune which checks the traveller coming from the plain at the first entrance of the hills and gives him time to realise the nature of the land which lies before him.
It needs no long puzzling to discover whence the importance of Castellammare has been derived in all the centuries. The port offers a safe shelter for shipping, which of itself counts for much upon a coast possessing few such anchorages; and it lies near the entrance of that valley road across the neck of the Sorrento peninsula, which is the natural route of trade between Naples and Salerno. The road is of much historical interest, as any highway must be which has been followed by so many generations of travellers, both illustrious and obscure; and any man who chooses to recollect by what various masters Salerno has been held will be able to people this ancient track with figures as picturesque as any in the history of mankind. He will observe, moreover, the importance of the Castle of Nocera, which dominates this route of traders. I confess to being somewhat puzzled as to the exact course by which the commerce of Amalfi extricated itself from the mountains and dispersed itself over the mainland. Doubtless the merchants of La Scala and Ravello followed the still existing road from Ravello to Lettere, and thence to Gragnano, whence comes the ancient punning jest, "L'Asene de Gragnano Sapevano Lettere." This road is certainly ancient, and early in the present century it was the usual approach to Amalfi, whither travellers were carried in litters across the mountains. The little handbook of Ravello, based on notes left by the late Mr. Reid, seems to account this road more recent than the age of Ravello's commercial greatness. Probably a recency of form rather than of course is meant; but in any case, I cannot believe that the merchants of Amalfi sent out their trade by a route which began for them with an ascent so very long and arduous. Possibly they approached Gragnano by a road running up the valley from Minori or Majori. Of course the traders of old days were very patient of rough mountain tracks, and did not look for the wide beaten turnpikes which we have taught ourselves to regard as essential to commerce. Doubtless, therefore, many a team of mules from Amalfi, laden with silks and spices from the East, came down through Lettere, where it would scarce get by the castle of the great counts who held that former stronghold of the Goths without paying toll or tribute for its safety on the mountain roads. And so, passing through Gragnano and beneath the hillsides where the palaces of ancient Stabiæ lie buried, the wearied teams would come down at last to Castellammare, where they would need rest ere beginning the hot journey by the coast road into Naples.
Both the roads which diverge from Castellammare, the one heading straight across the plains towards the high valley of La Cava, the other clinging to the fresh mountain slopes, are therefore full of interest. Of Nocera, indeed, its castle full of memories of Pope Urban VI., and its fine church Santa Maria Maggiore, some two miles out, any man with ease might write a volume. But we stayed long scorching on the plains among the buried cities; and the hill route is the more inviting now. The weather is disposed to break. A gleam of sun sparkles here and there upon the water. Let us see what the hillsides have to show us.
Castellammare is a dirty and ill-odorous town. As I hurry through its crowded streets, brushed by women hawking beans and dodging others who are performing certain necessary acts of cleanliness at their house doors, I occupy myself in wondering whether there is in all southern Italy a city without smells. From Taranto to Naples I can recall none save Pompeii. It is, doubtless, an unattainable ideal to bring Castellammare to the state of that sweet-smelling habitation of the dead; though it would be unwise to prophesy what the volcano may not yet achieve on the scene of his old conquests. There are so many things lost and forgotten upon this coast. I see that Schulz, whose great work still remains by far the best guide through the south of Italy, describes vast catacombs in the hillside at Castellammare. I must admit that I do not know where these catacombs are. Schulz, who visited them before 1860, found in them pictures not older than the twelfth century, and resembling in many details those which are seen in the catacombs of Naples. Certainly the old grave chambers are no longer among the sights of this summer city. But the whole region impresses one with the constant sense that the keenest interest and the longest knowledge spent upon this ground which is strewn with the dust of so many generations, will leave behind countless undiscovered things. The world seems older here than elsewhere. And so it is, if age be counted by lives and passions rather than by geologic courses.
As one goes on up the ascent, the narrow alleys break out into wider spaces, and here and there a breath of mountain air steals down between the houses, or the ripe fruit of an orange lights up a shadowy courtyard with a flash of colour; till at last the houses fall away, and one climbs out on a fresh hillside, where a double row of trees gives protection from the sun. Two sharp turns of the steep road bring one into a small village, of which the first house is the Hotel Quisisana. But I have nothing to say to hotels at this hour of the morning, and accordingly trudge on a little further up the hill, till I come to the Vico San Matteo, a lane branching off along the hillside on my right, which brings me to a shady terrace road, rising and falling on the hillside just below the level of the woods. At this height the air blown down from sea and mountain is sweet and pure. The banks are glowing with crimson cyclamen and large anemones, both lavender and purple, while the hillside on the right, dropping rapidly towards the town, is thick-set with orchards, through whose falling blossoms the sea shines blue and green, while across the bay Vesuvius pours out its rosy vapour coil by coil.
It is a wide and noble view, one of those which have made Castellammare famous in all ages, as the first slopes of the cool wooded mountains must needs be among all the cities of the scorching plains. In Roman days, just as in our own, men looked up from Naples long before the grapes changed colour or the figs turned black, pining for the sweet breezes of Monte Sant'Angelo, and the whispering woods of Monte Coppola, where the shadows lie for half the day, and the only sounds are made by the busy hacking of the woodcutters. There is no caprice of fashion in this straining to the hills, but a natural impulse as strong as that which stops a hot and weary man beside a roadside well. Every generation of Neapolitans has come hither in the summer; everyone will do so to the end of time. I shall go up this evening to the Bourbon pleasure-house; and here, set before me at the turning of the road, is the ancient castle of the Hohenstaufen, built by the great Emperor Frederick the Second, and added to by the foe who seized his kingdom and slew his son, yet came to take his pleasure on the same spot.
Underneath the round towers of the crumbling ruin an old broken staircase descends towards the town, skirting the castle wall. It is from this ancient ladder, ruinous and long disused, that Castellammare looks its best. The harbour lies below, and a fishing boat running in furls its large triangular sail and drops its anchor. The long quay is a mass of moving figures. The tinkle of hammers rings through the quiet air. Here in the shadow of the woods time seems to pause, and one sees the hillside, the staircase, and the old town below much as they must have looked when Boccaccio came out hither in his hot youth, inflamed with love for Marie of Anjou, and heard, perhaps, on some summer night within the woods the story which he tells us of the base passion which beset the fierce King Charles in his old age, and how he overcame it. The tale, though possibly not true, is worth recalling, if only because not many kingly actions are recorded of the monarch who slew Conradin.
An exile from Florence had come to end his days among these mountains, one Messer Neri Degli Uberti. He was rich, and bought himself an estate a bowshot distant from the houses of the town, and on it made a shady garden, in the midst of which he set a fishpond, clear and cool, and stocked it well with fish. So he went on adding beauty upon beauty to his garden, till it chanced that King Charles heard of it, when in the hot summer days he came out to his castle by the sea for rest, and desiring to see the pleasaunce sent a messenger to Messer Neri to say that he would sup with him next evening. The Florentine, bred among the merchant princes, received the King nobly; and Charles, having seen all the beauties of the garden, sat down to sup beside the fishpond, placing Messer Neri on one side and on the other his own courtier, Count Guido di Monforte. The dishes were excellent, the wines beyond praise, the garden exquisite and still. The King's worn heart thrilled with pleasure. Cares and remorse fled away, and the charm of the soft summer evening reigned unbroken.
At that moment two girls came into the garden, daughters of Messer Neri, not more than fifteen. Their hair hung loose like threads of spun gold. A garland of blue flowers crowned it, and their faces wore the look of angels rather than of sinful humankind, so delicate and lovely were their features. They were clad in white, and a servant followed them carrying nets, while another had a stove and a lighted torch. Now the King wondered when he saw these things; and as he sat watching the girls came and did reverence to the old, grim monarch, and then walking breast deep into the fishpond, swept the waters with their nets in those places where they knew the fish were lurking. Meanwhile one of the servants blew the live coals of the stove, while his fellow took the fish; and by-and-by the girls began to toss the fish out on the bank towards the King, and he, snatching them up with jest and laughter, threw them back; and so they sported like gay children till the broil was ready. Then the girls came out of the water, their thin dresses clinging round them; and presently returning, dressed in silk, brought to the King silver dishes heaped up high with fruit, and then sang together some old song with pure childlike voices, so sweet that as the weary tyrant sat and listened it seemed to him as if some choir of angels were chanting in the evening sky.
Now as the old King rode homeward to his castle, the gentle beauty of these girls stole deeper and deeper into his heart, and one of them especially, named Ginevra, stirred him into love, so that at last he opened his heart to Count Guido, and asked him how he might gain the girl. But the Count had the courage of a noble friend, and set the truth before him, showing how base a deed he meditated. "This," he said, "is not the action of a great king, but of a cowardly boy. You plot to steal his daughter from the poor knight who did you all the honour in his power, and brought his daughters to aid him in the task, showing thereby how great is the faith which he has in you, and how firmly he holds you as a true king, and not a cowardly wolf." Now these words stung the King the more since he knew them to be true; and he vowed he would prove before many days were over that he could conquer his lusts, even as he had trodden down his enemies. So, not long afterwards, he went back to Naples; and there he made splendid marriages for both the girls, heaping them with honours, and having seen them in the charge of noble husbands, he went sorrowfully away into Apulia, where with great labours he overcame his passion. "Some may say," adds Fiammetta, who told the tale on the tenth day of the _Decameron_, "that it was a little thing for a king to give two girls in marriage; but I call it a great thing, ay, the greatest, that a king in love should give the woman whom he loves unto another."
Fiammetta should have known of what she spoke--none better. I wonder why Boccaccio chose to put an impossible circumstance into this story. If the tale be true of anyone, it cannot be one of the Uberti family who settled in the territory and near the castle of the great Guelf king. For the Uberti were all Ghibellines, supporters of the empire and deadly enemies of him who slew Manfred. Not one of them ever asked or obtained mercy from Charles, who was the butcher of their family. Boccaccio certainly did not forget this. No Florentine could have been ignorant even momentarily of circumstances so terrible, affecting so great a family. No carelessness of narrative could account for the introduction of one of the Uberti into the story. It must have been deliberate, though I do not see the reason. It may have been that he desired only to accentuate the magnanimity of Charles, to whose grandson, King Robert, he owed much, and chose the circumstances, whether true or false, which made that magnanimity most striking. I can find no more probable explanation.
The road which goes on past the castle undulates beneath an arch of beech trees, just unfurling their young leaves of tender green, and in half a mile or so comes out at the ancient monastery of Pozzano, a red building of no great intrinsic interest, but recalling the name of Gonsalvo di Cordova, "il gran capitano," to whose piety the foundation of the convent is frequently ascribed, though in truth there had been an ecclesiastical foundation on the spot for three centuries before Gonsalvo's time, and all he did was to restore it from decay. I doubt if many people remember the great soldier now. The peasants who go up and down the slope before the convent doors know far better the tale of the mysterious picture of the Madonna which was found buried in a well, but is now hung up in glory in the church.
It is worth while to stop and hear the story of this picture. Long before the present convent was built, when the hillside at this spot lay waste and covered with dense herbage, through which the mules going to Sorrento forced their way with labour, the people of Castellammare noticed a flame which sprang up night by night like a signal fire lit to warn ships off the coast. The people looked and trembled, for there were strange beings on the mountain, dwarfs, and what not! No mortal man would make a fire there. So the signal blazed, but none went near it, till at length some fishers casting their nets in the bay, and wondering among themselves what could be the meaning of the flame which was then burning on the hill, saw the Madonna come to them across the sea, all clothed in light. The radiant virgin stood looking down upon them kindly as they sat huddled in their fear, and bade them tell their Bishop to search the ground over which the fire hovered, for he would there find an image of herself.
The poor men took no heed of what they thought a vision of the night; nor did they obey the Virgin when she came again. But when on the third night the Queen of Heaven descended to this murky world, she towered above their boat incensed and awful, denouncing against them all the pains of hell and outer darkness if they dared neglect her bidding. The fear-struck fishers hastened to their Bishop on the first light of morning and told him their tale. He too had seen a celestial vision, warning him of the coming of the sailors. There was no room for doubt or hesitation. He put himself at the head of a long penitent procession, went up the hill, discovered a well just where the flame had burnt, and in the well the marvellous picture which now adorns the church.
How came the picture there? If one could answer that question some light would be thrown on the age of the relic. The country people when they see any work of ancient art are disposed to say, "San Luca l'ha pittato"! ("St. Luke painted it"), as he did the Madonna of the Carmine in Naples; and accordingly this picture also has been ascribed to the brush of the Evangelist. The priests themselves do not claim an origin so sacred for their canvas, but maintain that it is an early Greek work, buried for safety in the days when, at the bidding of the iconoclastic Emperor, Leo the Isaurian, an attempt was made to root out image worship from the land. I do not know whether any competent expert has pronounced the painting to be of an age which renders the story probable. Ecclesiastical traditions are frequently inspired rather by piety than truth, and for my part, when I remember what ravages the Turks committed along these coasts up to the boyhood of men not long dead, I can find no reason for going back to the eighth century to discover facts which may have led either priests or laymen to bury sacred things.
In these days the Madonna of Pozzano walks no more upon the sea. Yet she remains, in a particular degree, the protectress of all sailors; and one may very well suspect that the priestly tale of the miraculous light, the hidden well, and the long-forgotten picture, does but conceal some record of kindness done to mariners which we heretics might prize more highly. For in old days, when ships approaching Naples may have found it hard to set their course after the light faded, and harder still to anchor off a lee shore, a beacon fire on the monastery roof would have been a noble aid, such as must have saved many a tall ship and brought many a sailor home to his wife in safety. Surely in some such facts as these lies the explanation of the traditional attachment of the sailors to the Madonna of Pozzano. "Ave Maria, Stella Maris!"--a star of the sea indeed, if it was the beacon kindled by her servants by which poor mariners steered back to port.
It needs not much faith to believe some portion of this pretty story. Incredulity is generally stupid; but he who most sincerely desires to be wise must needs ponder when he finds that almost every town throughout the peninsula possesses a Madonna found in some wondrous way. At Casarlano, for example, Maria Palumbo was feeding a heifer when she heard a voice issuing from the bushes, which said, "Maria, tell your father to come and dig here, and he will find an image of me." Maria, seeing no one, did not understand, but the same thing happened on the next day and the next, while at length her comprehension was quickened by a light box on the ear, which might have changed into a heavy one had she waited for another day. But, growing prudent by experience, she told her father all; and he, knowing that it was not for him to reason concerning heavenly monitions, went and dug in the spot indicated, and there found an image which has been of peculiar sanctity ever since. In fact its sensibilities were so keen, that when the Turks ravaged the country in 1538 it wept tears mingled with drops of blood.
When speaking of these Madonnas it would be wrong to omit the one most honoured in Nocera, and in many other places round about. She is known as "La Madonna delle Galline"--the Madonna of the cocks and hens--and her image was found, according to one version of the tale, by the scratching of hens in the loose soil which covered it. Her feast is on Low Sunday, or rather on the three days of which that Sunday is the centre; and most visitors who stay at Castellammare in the spring must have seen some trace of the festa. The procession starts from Nocera, and as the crowds of chanting priests and pious laity go by, every good peasant woman looses a hen, or else a pigeon, which she has previously stained bright purple. The purple hens perch on the base of the Madonna's statue, made broad and large for their accommodation, and are then collected by the master of the ceremonies, who sells them to devout persons. In many a village from Gragnano to La Cava the purple hens may be occasionally seen pecking in the dust, a marvel and astonishment to English visitors, who, being unaware how much their plumage owes to the dye-bag, are disposed to barter at a high price for animals so certain to create sensation at the next poultry show.
At the foot of the slope which drops from Pozzano into the highway from Castellammare to Sorrento is a little roadside shrine, set deeply in the rock, over which pious hands have inscribed one of those pathetically appealing calls to wayfarers which seem to penetrate so rarely the hearts to which they are addressed--
"Non sit tibi grave Dicere Mater ave."
"Let it not be a burden to say, Hail, Mother!" It is a gentle appeal, a light act of devotion, yet few there are who care to claim the blessing. The peasants, men and women, go by without an instant's pause in their chatter, or the slightest glance towards the shrine. They do not want even the human love which is offered to them so simply. In Naples, on the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, is another Madonna, who has put on even more passionately the accents of a human mother brooding over sorrow-stricken children, and all the strong feeling is expressed in verses, of which the burden runs--
"... C'è un'allegrìa Incontrar la Madonna in sulla via"--
"It is a joy to meet the Mother of mankind beside the way." In the last verse the pleading becomes more eager, giving utterance to the cry of a lost and frightened child seeking the protection which will never fail it--
"... O mamma mia Venite incontrarmi in sulla via!"
But neither does this call find a ready answer, and I think the appeal of the verses falls more often on the hearts of strangers and aliens in creed than on those which it seeks to comfort.
The steep slope before the convent at Pozzano was the end of the ancient mule track from Sorrento, the same, I imagine, by which St. Peter travelled after landing at Sorrento, as I shall tell in the next chapter. Anyone who cares to penetrate behind the convent can trace it still meandering up hill and down dale with a pleasant indifference to gradients which is characteristic of highways of measureless antiquity. Over the crest of Capo d'Orlando and many another headland it climbs, as if its main object were to take one up into the clear, silent air, over the sweet-smelling brushwood, where myrtle and rosemary scent the air, and the white gum-cistus grows like a weed. No one follows that lonely track in these days, yet it is worth while to walk along it, if only that one may see how easy it made the respectable, but now decadent, trade of brigandage, which in days not yet far distant was the sweet solace of all the men and most of the women in the towns, and yet more in the mountain villages of the peninsula. Castellammare, placed so as to command the highway from Naples to Salerno, as well as those coast roads which were more frequented by wealthy tourists of all nations, was in high favour with men who practised the gentle art of stopping travellers, and many a heavy purse was eased of its burden upon the lonely roads. Fra Diavolo was well known here; in fact, it was among the mountains above this very road to Sorrento that he tried his 'prentice hand at the profession in which he afterwards became so great a master.
The Convent of Santa Marta lies towards Vico Equense, high up in the olive woods, in a lonely situation, guarded by its sanctity. That had been quite enough, until Fra Diavolo came into the world, to keep safe not only the nuns, but even their gold statue of the Madonna, which is perhaps more wonderful, though both are sterling proofs of the excellent and reverential morals of the people.
One Scarpi dwelt in the woods above Castellammare, with a faithful band of followers who loved him. I fear he is forgotten now, which is scarcely just, for he was a bold and bloodthirsty bandit. But as is said in the _Purgatorio_ on a similar occasion--
"... Credette Cimabue nella pintura Tener lo Campo! ed ora ha Giotto il grido."
In Brigantaggio it is just the same, and Scarpi's just celebrity is obscured by the greater fame of Fra Diavolo.
Scarpi was torn two ways; cupidity reminded him that the golden statue was easily obtained, piety interposed that it would be a shocking crime. Nothing worse was set down against him than the usual tricks on travellers, slitting their ears, and dismissing them upon occasion to a better world. It was a pity to spoil so fair a record. But Fra Diavolo, boy as he was when he joined Scarpi's band, possessed the great advantage of a single heart. Cupidity was not thwarted by any opposing force of piety, and craft came to make the weak arm strong.
He dressed himself like a novice, and going up boldly to the gate of the convent proclaimed himself a penitent, and sought admission to the Order. I doubt not he had an innocent face. The mother superior welcomed him, and straightway shut him up in solitude for the usual three days' communing with heavenly powers, which was to prepare him for the spiritual life to which he aspired. The boy naturally wished to make this intercourse as direct as possible, and making his way unobserved into the chapel he seized the golden Madonna and hid her under some straw in a cart belonging to a peasant whom some lawful occasion had brought up to the convent. Having done this, he presented himself before the Mother Superior, telling her reflection had convinced him he was not fitted for a heavenly life--which was indeed no more than the truth--and so departed with her approval.
The poor peasant driving down among the olive woods somewhat later, all unconscious of the riches in his creaking cart, was probably at a loss to understand why Scarpi's faithful followers should stop him, and insist on rummaging in the straw. His emotions when he saw what they fished out would be a fit subject for a dramatic monologue. Horror at the sacrilege must have struggled with regret that he had not himself thought of fumbling in the straw. Had he done so, would he not have driven off the other way, and melted down the Madonna in his own cottage? To be made the tool by which sinners acquire wealth is surely bitter, and often in after life the poor man must have cursed the fate which did not whisper in his ear what it was he carried in the cart.
But Scarpi's bandits carried off the statue, and Fra Diavolo gained great honour with them. This early fame he never lost. And the common people, holding that priests and devils are, however opposite in all their qualities, the only classes of mankind who are uniformly cunning and successful in all they undertake, combined the titles into one cognomen, no whit too glorious for the chieftain, who in his untutored youth had proved greater than all the restraints which hamper greedy men, and had laid hands on the Madonna.
So Fra Diavolo became a mighty leader, and woeful are the tales which travellers told of him. Yet I should be unjust if I did not mention that his most brutal outrages were sometimes capable of being dignified by the name of politics, if not of loyalty to an exiled king. For Ferdinand of Bourbon when he fled from his throne of Naples at the end of the last century, skulking from revolutionary outblasts and the coming of the French, was not so far untrue to the traditions of his race as to despise the help of any agents, however rascally. It might have seemed incongruous if we had found the inheritor of the name of the constable Bourbon who led Frundsberg's Lanzknechts down on Rome in 1527, and cast the treasures of ages as a prey to the scum of Europe, if we had found this monarch saying to himself "Non tali auxilio," and indulging in the luxury of scruples. But Ferdinand despised no man who would help him; and so Fra Diavolo, the murderer and bandit, became a secret agent of the exiled king, working hand in hand with that even more atrocious scoundrel Mammone, whose habit it was to dine with a newly severed human head upon the table, and whose cold-blooded assassinations were more in number than any man could count. So these murderous devils cut off French couriers on the mountain roads, attacked small parties in overwhelming numbers, and performed other gallant deeds in the service of their king, who was not ungrateful, but rewarded them after his kind and theirs.
I can find but little in the streets of Castellammare which invites me to linger in them. There are mineral baths just outside the town, but Providence gave me no occasion for visiting them, and I dislike the apparatus of ill-health. I went past the baths, therefore, and strolled on through the crowded, evil-smelling streets till I came out again at the foot of the hill leading to the woods of Quisisana, and went up once more beneath the green arches of the budding leaves, till I saw from time to time a snatch of sea above the houses and the wide sunlit plain revealed itself stretching far and distant round the base of the great volcano.
As I went through the little village of which I spoke before, I noticed hanging on a wire which crosses the road a doll made in the likeness of an old grey-haired woman, adorned with a tuft of feathers growing somewhat bare. As it swung to and fro in the light wind it had the aspect of a child's plaything which had fallen there by chance; but I had seen a similar doll hanging from a balcony in Castellammare, and knew the thing to be no toy.
Such dolls are seen commonly hanging in the air at this season in the Sorrento peninsula. The old woman is Quaresima, or Lent, and she is provided with as many hen's feathers as there are weeks in that period of fasting. Every Sunday one feather is plucked out; and when the last is gone Quaresima is torn down with rejoicing. On the first Sunday of her exaltation a playful diversion is carried on at the cost of poor Quaresima. A boy or girl, chosen by lot, is blindfolded and armed with a long stick, with which he strikes in the air, groping after the swinging figure. At last he finds it, and a sharp blow breaks a concealed bottle, letting out a red fluid--the blood of Lent; the ceremony is diversified by a good deal of horseplay.
I know not how ancient these superstitious ceremonies may be. Italy, perhaps southern Italy in particular, is crowded with usages handed down from days so old that it sometimes causes me a shudder to remember how many ages of mankind have passed by them in procession off the earth. The toy, the trivial folly persisting still, more than half meaningless, century after century, while the bright eyes and laughing lips, all that we call life, pass on like shadows when the sun goes in. It is the doll, the grotesque Quaresima, which has life and endures, not we, however distasteful it may be to realise it.
But if our time be shorter, and we shall see fewer springs than the absurd Quaresima, we may at least rejoice in the beauty of this one. For as unsettled weather brings the loveliest days, so the country has put on its rarest beauty. The blue sky hangs like a tent overhead, the clouds are driven back behind the mountains and lie there piled in heavy ranks of tower and column; while through the brown trunks of the trees and the green mist of their lower twigs I can see all the mountains behind Nola and towards Caserta rise one above the other into the far blue distance. For from the clouds of heaven there dropped light on some peaks and shadows on the others, purple lights and dark brown shadow deepening into indigo, so that some looked near and others far away, and some were sulphurous and others green, while all the Campagna laughed in the sunshine, and the houses white and pink flashed on the margin of the turquoise sea.
There are lovely villas on these fringes of the wood, stately houses with terraced gardens occupying the high slopes. The road twists upwards by sharp inclines, catching at each turn more of the freshness of the mountain, till at length it runs into the gateway of the old royal villa, a refuge used when heat or pestilence made Naples unendurable by almost every sovereign since the days of Charles the Second of Anjou. It was once the property of that shocking scoundrel, Pierluigi Farnese, most unsavoury and least respectable even among Popes' children, who do so little credit to St. Peter's chair. But it was associated more particularly with Ferdinand of Bourbon, who rebuilt the place. He is said to have given it the name "Quisisana" ("Here one gets well"); but I think that name, or at least as much of it as "Casa sana," is found in records much older than his time.
The villa is no longer royal, but it retains the aspect of old splendour. In these spring days it is empty and silent, lying with barred windows in expectation of those guests who will climb up the hill in crowds when the figs ripen and the sultry weather comes, and all Italy begins to dream of cool, green shades. For three summer months the place is an hotel, the "Margherita"; but now, when I walk round towards the wide terrace which overhangs the grass-grown courtyard, the sound of my steps echoes through the still air, and the red walls are eloquent of vanished royalty.
A formal air of ceremonial stiffness clings about the garden walks, suggestive of hoops and powder, of polished courtliness, and the old, stately manners which vanished from the earth in the crash of the Revolution. I pass out through the gate by which the courtiers entered the woods, and have hardly gone a hundred yards beneath the tender green of the young beech trees when I come to a shady fountain set round with stone seats, a pleasant spot in which the court used to linger on hot summer days, greeting the riders who mounted at the moss-grown block, so long disused except by peasants going to and fro with their rough carts. There were lovely roads laid out for those royal pleasure parties; but as I plunge further into the woods courts and kings are driven out of my mind by a sharp whirring sound breaking the silence of the treetops. Across an island of blue sky, in an ocean of green boughs, a bundle of faggots was flying like a huge brown bird. I watched it going with extraordinary speed. Hard on its heels came another, and then a third, while by watching closely I perceived that slanting downwards through the woods from the height of the next mountain there ran a stout wire, to which the faggots were slung by hooked sticks cut on those high uplands where the woodmen were working. Presently a sharp turn of the path brought me out at the last station of the wire. The faggots were piled high in stacks, the air was full of the scent of fresh-sawn wood, and a fire burning by the wayside sent up coils of thin blue smoke among the trees. Half a dozen men were piling cut staves upon a cart; and from time to time there was a jangling of bells as the mules tossed their heads or shivered, and all the brass contrivances set upon the harness to keep off the evil eye clashed together in the sunlight. Far away across dipping woods the logs came whirring down from Monte Pendolo. All the mountain tops are connected by these wires, and in every direction as one wanders through the silent woods the strange and not unmusical humming of the flying faggots is the only sound audible.
A little further wandering brings me to a glen, whose steep slopes are brown with fallen leaves and green with budding brushwood. A stream runs down through the ravine, and a stone bridge is flung across it. Here the road divides, one branch going more directly to those uplands whence the faggots start upon their journey, and by this route bare-legged children hurry up carrying baskets of the forked sticks by which the bundles hang. But I go onwards by the other road, winding upwards by slow inclines, now deep in glades where large blue anemones glow in the long grass, and bee orchids hide among the shadows, now emerging in full sight of the wide blue gulf and the smoking volcano which towers over it, till at last I reach the top of Monte Coppola, where once more seats and tables set beneath the trees mark a spot at which the Bourbon court used to revel in the mountain breezes. I lean over the low breastwork, and enjoy the splendour of the prospect.
It is late afternoon, and the westering sun leaves the great bulk of Monte Faito in deep shadow, casting only here and there a fleck of warm gold light on the pines that clothe some shoulder, and throwing into deeper shade the ravines and scars which are chiselled out of his grey flanks. Yet even in the dark clefts there are gleams of yellow broom or cytisus; for the cuckoo is calling all over the sunny country, the trees are in their brightest leaf, and all the slopes of oak and chestnut that sweep down to the margin of the bay are like a cataract of vivid green tumbling down the mountain. Here, on the summit, it is very still. The silence of the mountains holds the air, and scarce a bird twitters in the gold light. The ridge of Faito, like a gigantic buttress, cuts off all the western promontory towards Sorrento, and falls into the sea across the peak of Ischia.
As the sun sank lower, and the warm light grew deeper and more golden, a great bar of cloud formed across the western sky. The sun was now above and now below it. Ischia grew shadowy, and then caught the most delicate light imaginable, swimming like an impalpable fairy island on a sea of darkest blue. Then, at some unseen change in the order of the heavens, suddenly the craggy island lost its colour, and Monte Epomeo stood out sharp and black against the flushed sky. So one saw it for a few brief moments. But all the while a rosy glow was spreading over Cape Miseno, it ran along the coast of Baiæ, and caught Posilipo with a delicate radiance. Then all at once Ischia sprang again into light, quivering with every shade of rose and purple, till the sun sank down behind its blackening peak, and the stars hung large and luminous in a space of clear green sky.