Part 3

Very Eminent Prisco, archbishop of Naples, sitting on the mystic throne where the great pious soul of Sisto Riario Sforza shone of deepest faith, where the simple and kind soul of Guglielmo Sanfelice shone with the tenderest religious charity, you, whose loving heart as a minister is certainly aching, you who have already spoken to the people and to the clergy in the name of Christ, you who have already helped and promoted help, look very Eminent Prisco, our archbishop of Naples, look at the despair of the people of Naples. The calamity which strikes us all, more or less, is indeed tremendous! But its aspect above all has something so dreadfully threatening, to fill even the coldest and most courageous, with a sense of apprehension and awe. These immense clouds now gray, now livid, now reddish now black, towering over our heads, stretching from Vesuvius till here, covering the sea, the city, hiding the sun, darkening the air, these clouds, which will later fall in a long and heavy shower of cinders, these clouds which science and experience declares perfectly innocent it is true, and which enfold the whole city, oppressing it, and giving it such gloomy look, are terrifying, and frightening every body.

In the first days of the disaster, Neapolitans have maintained their usual calm and serenity, but now terror has stricken the most, and has almost grown into a frenzy. We know, of course, that all these phenomena are more terrible in their appearance than in their substance, but the lower classes don't know this, and don't wish to know it, and their fear assumes now a furious dangerous character.

Through the papers we can do nothing, as the people don't read us, and generally do not know how to read us, neither can Government notices stuck on the city walls have any effect on them, since they cannot read them. And yet they seem to go mad, to lose complete control of themselves, they cry, scream, run madly, they yell, they don't pray anymore before the images of saints and madonnas. They have the despair of the child, of the savage, and this very frenzy is a rapid contagion rendering life more desolate and difficult before this calamity.

All the most terrible instincts give way before this mad terror. We tremble at this new coming danger, and see no way to conquer it.

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You, our dear bishop must conquer it. You must speak to the people once more, and with a calm and firm word, tell them that their life is in no danger, that they have nothing to fear from these black clouds sent by the eruption, from the ashes which fall on the streets and on the houses. Call your clergy, and tell them to speak to the people, in the churches, in the chapels, in the congregations, in the sacristies. The priests of Naples are all very kind, they are quite near to the people for their virtues of Christian simplicity, and humility: they know how to make the people love them by the gentleness of their manners, and by that fatherly familiarity which is such treasure among us. Set these priests, rectors, parsons, speak to the people, especially in this holy week, when sacred services are so frequent, when, oftener than ever, people go to church. Let the rectors, the parsons and all these men of holy moral authority, say to them that they must be calm, and serene, that there is no fear of death, that nobody will die under the lapillus, under the ashes, and that all these screams and moans are not acceptable to God, nor to his saints. Let those who always speak to the people from the altar, from the pulpit, from, the confessional, from the sacristies, speak now, using all that influence they possess to control the soul of the most ignorant obscure. Let religion glorify itself in this civilised work of peace in the minds of this population. Let yourself and your clergy have the merit as Christian and as Neapolitan citizen, to calm this delirium of fright and give back tranquillity to all this population in confusion. Repeat, repeat to these poor people, that for them and their families no danger is to be feared, and people will believe it. Let this noble and great, work be one of those beautiful and glorious social events, of which religion has always been and is always capable when any misfortune has befallen to this city. Neapolitan people are accused of being superstitious and are despised for this: Be it your work and that of the clergy to demonstrate that only faith in its civil form, in its form of high moral beauty, can accomplish certain moral miracles where no other power of mind can reach.

April 12th 1906.

TO THE WOMEN OF NAPLES

Women of Naples whose heart knows how to beat for all great, noble, beautiful things, oh! women of Naples, possessing fervently and efficaciously the great virtue of piety, women of Naples, always kind and tender, whatever be your condition, either brilliant or obscure, whatever be your fortune, great or modest, whether God has granted you the supreme goods of life, or whether your life runs its simple and shaded course, you to whom the unfortunate ones never turn in vain, to whom the words of Christ, "who gathers to him a poor man, gathers me", are a law of the heart, oh! women of Naples, look around you, and see how thousands and thousands of poor unfortunate beings, men, women, and children, your own brethren in Christ, have been stricken down by this tremendous calamity. They had a home and they have been obliged to flee from it not to remain buried under its ruins: they had an orchard and it is gone, they had a field and it is all buried under the stones, they had work and they cannot work anymore, they had some kind of industry, and all this is gone! They are poor, exiled people, escaping for life, and notwithstanding all help, notwithstanding the great impulse of charity, they are too many, they are all a population of poor people, of starving people of naked people, and more must be done for them. Each of you women, either rich or poor, must open her arms and heart to these poor miserable creatures. For even if they have a shelter, they are often without any bed; if they have a bed, they are perhaps without bread or without clothes. Women, Neapolitan women, let your help be given in all the possible forms and ways, gather up to your heart these poor unfortunate beings, just as if they represented the figure of Christ, and be generous to them in the kindest and noblest of charities. Look after these poor people, they are everywhere, in every public institution, at Granilis, barracks at the Albergo dei Poveri, and we cannot do all for them, if you Neapolitan women don't give your part in bread, in clothes, in all that is needed to feed a poor man, and to shelter him from cold. Neapolitan women, good Christians, in these days of mourning, be a heavenly smile to these poor unfortunate ones. Good Christian women celebrate this Easter in the closest brotherhood with those who suffer.

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Have you heard? In Granilis barracks from three thousand to three hundred people from the Vesuvian comunes, have been sheltered, and among them there is an immense number of terrified and sorrowful women, and little children. There are a great many, perhaps thousand poor little creatures escaped from death in their mothers' arms, in the terrible nights when the storm of cinders, stones, and fire was at its worst.--The noble impulse of the soldiers there, works wonders, and the 19th infantry is certainly first in this noble and generous hospitality.--In this barrack, the people who escaped from the conflagration have shelter and food, and colonel Belluzzi, and his officers are entirely given to this high work of charity. But these poor people have no clothes to change, and the children especially are almost in a naked condition. What can these poor soldiers and officers do to clothe these destitute children? It is your task, Neapolitan women, now that you know it to gather up from your house all the coats, dresses, linen covers, all that is superfluous, and send it to the miserable people at Granilis barracks. You all have girls and boys, and your children have plenty of clothes they don't wear any more. Give them to these unfortunate ones, to these babies who are dear to their mothers as yours are to you! Gather up everything you can, bundle it up and send it all to the barracks. All will be useful, everything is useful. Also they who have no money to give, have a dress, a shift, a pair of shoes to dispose of, and thus you also, if you are not rich, can show your heart in this useful and simple way. Great committees are a great thing, but their work is too slow for too many reasons! Without committees, without signing subscriptions, give your motherly charity, give bread and clothes, let it go from your hand to other hands, from heart to heart, at once, just as Christ has prescribed. And in doing this noble work, you Neapolitan women, will feel your soul expand with emotion and tenderness thinking that each of those little creatures you will dress with your own children's clothes is a little unknown brother to them, and you will bless God to have been able to perform one of the noblest and highest works, one of the highest duties which belongs to our soul.

April 12th 1906.

EASTER OF RESURRECTION

A few hours after this paper will have reached your hands, my readers, you will hear, in the morning air a sound from afar, or perhaps near, a light and touching sound. And even if in that moment you are quite taken up by thoughts of interest and pleasure, by the cares of a long day, you will start, and a whole crowd of remembrances, perhaps of hopes, will spring out from your heart living in the past, and filled with illusions. Thus the Easter bells, those which Wolfgang Goethe, the poet of poets loved and exalted, those which touched the heart of old Faust, the Easter bells, grave and soft at the same time, will tell you that a whole anniversary of sorrow has started and closed, and that a new spring, spring of triumph has appeared in a glory of light and perfumes, in the large and pure horizons where the spirits live. Never before as in this year did the holy week look so dark and sad to all hearts, for it was marred by the desperate cry of those who ran away under the shower of burning stones, by the missing of many frightened children, under the black threatening sky full of flashes and lightnings. Never before as in this week, the ancient prodigies which surrounded with their frightful expression the death of Christ, the flaming sky, the trembling earth, the torn veil from the Temple, seemed to repeat themselves in all their terrible truth. And never before as in this year, the heart of all Christians wished ardently, through their warmest prayers, that these sad days should pass quickly away, and that resurrection of life, peace, serenity and joy should console human beings from the deep and terrible things they had experienced. How much sweeter, this morning, in the distance, will these Easter bells ring for us all, announcing to us, as a particular grace, the end of a conflagration that has troubled us so much, and brought so many bitter tears to our eyes. Resurrection to-day will mean also in its symbolic and yet real language, the end of a week of passion and death, the end of a spiritual and material tragedy which has twice oppressed our tired and worn out souls: resurrection to-day with its slow and subtle bell-sound will mean, to those who were agonising with dread the return of life.

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Well let us live again! Let this palpitating city undertake once more its works, its fatigues, its industries, all kind of business, all light-houses of progress: and from its hills, green in their spring dress, not withstanding its Vesuvian cinders to its sea so wonderfully calm, in these days let Naples live again its magnificent life!--In every order of things let the almost dead organism resuscitate: from the offices to the theatres, from the churches to the schools from the banks to the tribunals, from art places to worldly centers, let Naples resuscitate from its week of passion and death.

Let the existence of six hundred thousand inhabitants proclaim its rights, reacting against a mortal depression, and let, in fact, existence conquer in a better way the incommensurable damages of this week of passion and death. Ah no! don't let us forget from one day to the other this terrible cataclysm which only yesterday made us tremble, and the traces of which will never, be effaced again. Don't let us forget the dead who slept in that tremendous night, and the living who were deprived of their roofs, bread and clothes.--But in order to exercise the most efficacious discipline in order to be of some relief to the hundred and fifty thousand unfortunate ones of the Vesuvian communities, let us live again, let us think, let us wish, act, and work. Let the authorities help with wisdom and generosity this new life of Naples, making away with all prohibitions, making easy all difficulties of this crisis; untangling one by one, all the knots which obstructed our movements; and let every single citizen develope all their activity, without obstacles, without any stumbling stones. Let beautiful Naples resuscitate from this day, in all its beauty, goodness, and strength, this unfortunate city which has had its night of Chetsemane, sweating blood, but is now a stronger, younger and greater conqueror.

Let us live again for our country for our families, and for ourselves. Let us live again that we may help all our unfortunate brothers to live anew: let us live again in the fervor of actions in the ardor of will towards a great good, not only in ourselves not around us only, but beside ourselves and much farther, towards all those who suffered unjustly and cruelly. The sad trial is finished: the hour of suffering is gone! our soul has been soothed. Let us all live again: let us each live for the other! and all for all.

April 14th 1906.

FOUR-THOUSAND LITTLE BOXES

How great the irony of things is! Since last Thursday the fifth of April, when the cinders began to fall from Vesuvius, indeed, while they were having the races at the Campo di Marte, and Naples was gay and merry, for the last eight days our post-offices have shipped more than four thousand wooden boxes. At first all this lot of small and curious boxes, carefully sealed, some registered as samples of no valour, others as postal-parcels, seemed to greatly puzzle the postal officers. After a little the strange mystery was revealed, by opening eight or ten of them, as they were not well closed nor well sealed. These singular little boxes contained ashes from Vesuvius. More than four-thousand boxes of Vesuvian dust have gone and are still going. Irony of things!

These little boxes are sent as a strange and rare thing, to the farthest parts of the world, even to Australia, that the people from every part of the world, may see the Vesuvius ashes fallen over Naples. Till Australia! But especially to England and America: And by investigating the matter it has been seen that nearly all those who had shipped the boxes were foreigners. Which means that all the foreigners passing through here or established in Naples, or who had come here to see the eruption had immediately thought of gathering this dust, put it in little boxes, and send it to their relations, friends, lovers, and flirts. And this has been one of the most interesting points of this sad period: it has been a proof of the coldblood of these foreigners who in a conflagration like this see but the curious side of things. Four-thousand little boxes and perhaps more! And we here, feel sad and oppressed by these cinders burying us! How much better it would have been if the little boxes instead of four thousand had been forty thousand! it might have been the means of lessening this danger.

April 1906.

A WOMAN

Monday April 9

This has been one of the worst and saddest of the five days of tragic anguish of things, and men. I reached Somma Vesuviana at half past three, and the automobile which was carrying me, was obliged to stop quite outside the town closed, and over-powered as it was by the new strata of dust and lappillus. Then with the companions of this sad but dutiful excursion we have gone on on foot, sinking so deeply at every step, that fatigue seemed and was almost umbearable.--Few people peeped out of the doors of their country houses, nearly all covered and hidden under the ashes and lappillus, and spoke of two towns not very near, but not far, quite destroyed; S. Giuseppe and Ottaiano. These people told us of the dead of the many dead and wounded that were there and insisted before our incredulity. We thought that those poor peasants lied or exaggerated, we did not really believe it, but we hoped it! But alas! they were right and nothing of all that had happened there had been known, till the morning in Naples, and we ourselves, had climbed the sad calvary, only through vague presentiment of misfortune. It was quite true that more than three-hundred people lay dead between Ottaiano and S. Giuseppe. We walked dumb and trembling with deep sorrow, among stones and lappillus stopping now and then as if exhausted. An automobile had stopped in the midst of Somma Vesuviana, it had found it impossible to proceed, and was guarded by a chauffeur only. Two brave carabineers roamed sadly about, and when we asked them whose the automobile was, I was informed it belonged to the Duchess of Aosta, who having taken her leave from their Majesties about twelve o'clock, had gone up to Somma Vesuviana a little after mid-day. Not having been able to proceed towards Ottaiano either by the automobile or by carriage or horses since there were none to be had, and quite decided to reach Ottaiano, she had started on foot, on a road buried under ashes and lappillus, a road, which in ordinary times can be run over in two hours, and over which she had walked at least for four painful ones. Calm and resolute she had not hesitated a moment to undertake that difficult walk, but had gone through the whole way in a simple and silent manner reaching Ottaiano all alone on monday 9th of April, where pale with emotion she had witnessed the unburying of the first fifty dead. Then she had given all her cares and attendance to each of the bodies, with her own charitable hands with her kind and sweet words, with the tenderest encouragement to the most unfortunate.

And till sun-set in that terrible day in which all the horror of the conflagration seemed worst, since the catastrophe of Pompei seemed to be renewed in Ottaiano and in S. Giuseppe, there among the dead and the wounded stood the Duchess of Aosta helping the work of the doctors, giving orders, and providing for all. And when night fell covering so many funestous things, she got up on a horse, a simple carabineer's horse and sinking deep in rocks, and stones she reached at night Somma Vesuviana and returned to the Royal house of Capodimonte, letting nobody know what her day and her work had been.

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I relate this fact in its high simplicity since it does not only testify to the goodness of this woman but to her incomparable moral valour, since it is not only an act of charity, but from a woman, from a lady, from a princess it is an act of heroism. And of these deeds Elena of Aosta the daughter of the king of France, has accomplished a great many every day in this terrible week. She has gone all about the places where it is difficult and dangerous to go, in every place worthy of a great soul and fibre like hers is; where men, and especially men, have been afraid to go, she has gone bravely several times where need was most urgent, and where storm seemed stronger, there she has gone: and every where her steps have been usefully taken, her vivid strength has been used for the good, her hands have helped and consoled, her will has accomplished miracles. And do you know in what manner? Without official notices, without any pomp, without anybody knowing it, almost as if in secrecy. Often people have not known her, and many don't know now that she, who has quenched the thirst and hunger of so many, she who has helped the dying in the ruins and fire, is the descendant of S. Louis.

She has hidden herself when meeting people who could notice her, she has always worn modest and dark clothes, and her face has been hidden by veils, and she has withdrawn when frivolous and curious people have tried to observe her doings. This noble woman has not found any rest before this terrible misfortune of ours, and her work has been a high spiritual beauty, and the modesty and silence with which she has surrounded herself has been really sublime. And I stamp here her moral image with humble admiration and proud to know she is a woman as I am; and I am happy not to have to write down only in the daily news the Duchess of Aosta wore on her white satin waist a magnificent emerald pin; I am happy that a feminine soul in a vigorous fibre should show the world what is the power of virtue in a woman and in a christian. And for all those whom she has conforted really, in the terrible hour not caring herself for dangers and unconforts, for all the wounded and agonizing ones, for all those who weep, and were consoled by her, I implore on her all God's blessings and may her life be sowed with all goods, and may her children be blessed through her.

LET THE GUILTY ONES BE PUNISHED

The night before Easter has been full of fright and confusion for the people already prostrated by so many emotions.

This ringing of telephones, this continued and sudden ringing, in the depth of night, repeated every where, in military offices, government offices, newspaper offices, this anxious running to the telephones, this news given with trembling voice, these brief dialogues sometimes impetuous, sometimes sad, have been, and still are an incubus on us all, from the general to the reporter, from the Prefect to the municipal usher, from the director of a railway station to the firemen! Indeed, this ringing which makes our nerves thrill in the most painful way, the exhausted nerves of all those who have been obliged to suffer for the last ten days, and think, and act, in the mean time, this terrible, continued noise has not permitted us to sleep in this night before Easter. We all have been the victims of a deathly joke, invented by a man who, mad with terror, has made himself guilty of the lowest of deeds.

But obeying to our rigorous duty as publishers, also in this night before Easter, and in this very Easter morning we have given, in a very brief and simple form, without clamour or exaggeration, without lugubrious inventions, the news which the idleness of this M. Fedele had changed in a tolling of bells, and in a breath of death. It is natural that Prefects, under Prefects, Commissaries of Prefecture, should have been more than concerned, and that at head quarters they should have kept watch all night, giving orders on all the lines, awakening every body, and mobilitating every thing. Has not our M. Fedele spread terror every where? Later on in that same Easter morning, while our hearts rejoicing, especially this year when the day had brought peace and resurrection, every body was suddenly saddened by the spreading of this false news, not given by us, but thrown among us in the most emphatic and cruel way, spreading sorrow in the hardly revived spirits of the people, announcing that there were dead and wounded, even among the officers and the soldiers. Oh! poor mothers of officers and soldiers near and far away, you must have been the first to get the sad news, this low lying news, and your poor heart must have been broken before you were able to know that this news it was false.

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