Naples, Past and Present

by Arthur H. Norway

The craft and treachery of this great stroke fixed once for all the reputation of Ferdinand and Alfonso. The nice taste of Renaissance Italy revolted, giving voice to loud condemnation. King and Prince, surprised at the outcry, paused, and held back the secret executioner. It would be safer to have a show of justice; so a court was nominated, the prisoners were tried, and when they had been despatched from the world in this unexceptionable manner, one by one the other dukes and barons were caught and led into the secret pleasure chambers, whence they never more emerged. The Prince of Bisignano, the Duke of Melfi, the Duke of Nardo, counts and knights innumerable disappeared. Their children and their wives were treated in like manner. Few escaped; but for many a day Neapolitans told the tale how Bandella Gaetano, Princess of Bisignano, a woman of high courage and resource, fled with her young children to the Church of San Lionardo in the Chiaia; and there, profiting by the old fame of the saint as the guardian of fugitives, bribed a boatman to take her on to Terracina, and so sought refuge with the Colonnas. Ferdinand would have given much to stamp out the brood; and had he been able to turn the pages of the book of fate he would have given even more.

What happened to the prisoners was never known. For some time the fiction was kept up that they were alive, and food was even sent daily to their cells, set down perhaps beside the salted bodies in mockery. But the executioner was seen wearing a gold chain which had belonged to the Prince of Bisignano; and ere long it was known that every one was dead.

There is no doubt that in these awful days the Church of San Lionardo was filled with fugitives. It was there that Alfonso wrought that nameless deed of terror which dwelt so heavily upon his conscience as to destroy his nerves and send him fleeing from the kingdom. We have seen what things his conscience would endure; perhaps it is as well we remain in ignorance of what it would not. But if we argue from the known to the unknown we may form a surmise of the nature of that act which is enough to banish sleep, and may well make us grateful that the walls of that old sanctuary which concealed so terrible a secret stand no longer on the smiling shore which is the chosen parade of Neapolitan society of our own day.

There are two chapels in the castle, one opening from the other; but both lost whatever beauty they once had by the deplorable passion for Barocco, which wrought such evil in Naples. Two great beauties still remain, though not inside the chapels. One is the doorway, a lovely work of Giuliano da Majano, mercifully left untouched, I know not by what happy chance; the other is a winding staircase behind the choir, consisting of a hundred and fifty-eight steps, each formed of a single block of travertine, and so arranged that their inward edges form a perfect cylinder. There is no end to the scenes of history and tragedy which are recalled by these old walls and chambers, in which the hottest passions of life in Naples have spent themselves so often, even from the first coming of Charles of Anjou down to the creation of the Parthenopean Republic, when Nelson received the surrender of the Revolutionists, driven to despair by the arrival of his fleet. But these are tales which visitors must find out for themselves. If they will not go to Castel Nuovo on the inducement which I have given them, neither will they if I should write a volume.

NAPLES—OLD TOWN.

When I emerge from the old palace fortress I hesitate, being, in truth, half inclined to turn directly to the Carmine, the strongest point of interest in Naples. But a man will fail to comprehend the relation of the Carmine to ancient Naples if he goes to it by the broad street along the quays which lay outside the mediæval city. It is better to plunge into the maze of narrow ways which still, unto this hour, retain the general aspect of the city wherein Boccaccio rambled, picking up in I know not what haunt of roysterers those sad tales which beguile one yet in the pages of the Decameron. Who has not read of the nocturnal adventures of Andreuccio, who came from Pisa to Naples to buy horses with twenty gold florins in his pocket? Who would not wish to see the very lanes through which he wandered naked in the night? Who has not felt the charm of that naïve irresponsibility which pervades the tales of Naples in old days? Does it still exist? Are the narrow lanes athrob even now on summer nights with the thrumming of the lute, with the patter of girls' feet, made musical by wafts of song blown down from lofty windows?

"Flower of the rose,

If I've been merry, what matter who knows?"