"Get out of the way, with your skewbald ass. Heu! Heu!" There is scant room for the quality to pass up and down the whole Strada di Toledo. Such a running to and fro! Such a clacking, and clapping, and fleering, and cheering. Holy Mother of God, the town has gone mad. Listen to the bells. They will crack the very doors of Heaven with their jangling. The sky seems the hot half-hollow of a clanging bell. I verily believe they will rock the steeples off their foundations. Ding! Dang! Dong! Jingle-Jingle! Clank! Clink! Twitter! Tingle! Half Naples is hanging on the ropes, I vow it is louder than when they crown the Pope. The lapis-lazuli pillars in Jesus Church positively lurch with the noise; the carvings of Santa Chiara are at swinging poise. In San Domenico Maggiore, the altar quivers; Santa Maria del Carmine's chimes run like rivers tinkling over stones; the big bell of the Cathedral hammers and drones. It is gay to-day, with all the bells of Naples at play.
That's a fine equipage; those bays shine like satin. Why, it is the British Ambassadress, and two British officers with her in the carriage! Where is her hat? Tut, you fool, she doesn't need one, she is wearing a ribbon like a Roman senator. Blue it is, and there are gold letters: "Nelson and Victory." The woman is undoubtedly mad, but it is a madness which kindles. "Viva Nelson! Viva Miladi!" Half a hundred hats are flying in the air like kites, and all the white handkerchiefs in Naples wave from the balconies.
Brava, Emma Hamilton, a fig for the laws of good taste, your heart beats blood, not water. Let pale-livered ladies wave decorously; do you drive the streets and tell the lazzaroni the good news. Proud Lady Hamilton! Mad, whole-hearted Lady Hamilton! Viva! Viva ancora! Wear your Nelson-anchor earrings for the sun to flash in; cut a dash in your new blue shawl, spotted with these same anchors. What if lily-tongued dandies dip their pens in gall to jeer at you, your blood is alive. The red of it stains a bright band across the pages of history. The others are ghosts, rotting in aged tombs. Light your three thousand lamps, that your windows spark and twinkle "Nelson" for all the world to see, and even the little wavelets of the bay have a largess of gold petals dropped from his name. Rule, Britannia, though she doesn't deserve it; it is all Nelson and the Ambassadress, in the streets of Naples.
He has rooms at the Palazzo Sesso, the British Admiral, and all day long he watches the red, half-closed eye of Vesuvius gazing down at his riding ships. At night, there is a red plume over the mountain, and the light of it fills the room with a crimson glow, it might be a gala lit for him. His eyes swim. In the open sky hangs a steel-white star, and a bar of silver cuts through the red reflections of the mirrors. Red and silver, for the bay is not blue at night.
"Oh brave Nelson, oh God bless and protect our brave deliverer, oh, Nelson, Nelson, what do we not owe to you." Sea-blue, the warp; but the thread of the woof is bolted red. Fiddlers and dinners—Well, or Hell! as the case may be. Queens, populace—these are things, like guns, to face. Rostral Columns and birthday fêtes jar the nerves of a wounded head; it is better in bed, in the rosy gloom of a plume-lit room.
So the Admiral rests in the Palazzo Sesso, the guest of his Ambassador, and his ships ride at anchor under the flaming mountain.
The shuttle shoots, the shuttle weaves. The red thread to the blue thread cleaves. The web is plaiting which nothing unreaves.
The Admiral buys the Ambassadress a table, a pleasant tribute to hospitality. It is of satin-wood, sprinkled over with little flying loves arrayed in pink and blue sashes. They sit at this table for hours, he and she, discussing the destiny of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and her voice is like water tinkling over stones, and her face is like the same water twinkling in shallows.
She counts his money for him, and laughs at his inability to reduce carotins to English sixpences. She drives him out to Caserta to see the Queen, and parades him on the Chiaia to delight the common people. She is always before him, a mist of rose and silver, a damask irradiation, shading and lighting like a palpitant gem.
In the evenings, by the light of two wax candles, the Admiral writes kind acknowledgements to the tributes of half a world. Moslem and Christian sweetly united to stamp out liberty. It is an inspiring sight to see. Rule Britannia indeed, with Slavs and Turks boosting up her footstool. The Sultan has sent a Special Envoy bearing gifts: the Chelenck—"Plume of Triumph," all in diamonds, and a pelisse of sables, just as bonds of his eternal gratitude. "Viva il Turco!" says Lady Hamilton. The Mother of His Sultanic Majesty begs that the Admiral's pocket may be the repository of a diamond-studded box to hold his snuff. The Russian Tzar, a bit self-centred as most monarchs are, sends him his portrait, diamond-framed of course. The King of Sardinia glosses over his fewer gems by the richness of his compliments. The East India Company, secure of its trade, has paid him ten thousand pounds. The Turkish Company has given him plate. A grateful country augments his state by creating him the smallest kind of peer, with a couple of tuppences a year, and veneering it over by a grant of arms. Arms for an arm, but what for an eye! Does the Admiral smile as he writes his reply? Writes with his left hand that he is aware of the high honour it will be to bear this shield: "A chief undulated argent, from which a palm-tree issuant, between a disabled ship on the dexter, and a ruinous battery on the sinister, all proper." "Very proper, indeed," nods Sir William, but Lady Hamilton prods the coloured paper shield a trifle scornfully. "If I was King of England, I would make you Duke Nelson, Marquis Nile, Earl Aboukir, Viscount Pyramid, Baron Crocodile and Prince Victory." "My dear Emma, what a child you are," says Sir William, but the Admiral looks out of the window at the blood-red mountain and says nothing at all.