“Come!” said the Italian nurse; “quì non si mangià; sarebbe darsi la morte!”
Feeling the weakness of convalescence, the patient, though he insisted, lay quiet and soon slept again, and through almost the entire day and night which followed; but the second morning his hunger was no longer to be borne with. He implored food, and received the former answer: “No food is given in the hospital.”
Watching his time, therefore, the unfortunate man slipped from his bed, seized the first garments within his reach, rushed through doors happily for him unfastened, and into the street and Grande Place, where he saw a friend standing, and flung himself into his arms, demanding bread, as he was starving. He was fed and cured,—a solitary exception; yet the cruel and ignorant populace incurred more danger by an hour of fanaticism than they could have done in a month of charity. The French soldiers had soon constituted themselves nurses, performing frictions and other offices the Italians feared, and saving many. So great was the cowardice, that a consecrated wafer was presented to a dying man by his priest at the extremity of a pair of pincers. The only active means they adopted was the ordering a procession in honour of Our Lady of Ancona, attired for the occasion in a white robe, spangled with golden stars. Capt. de V——l and his company formed part of the procession, it always happening, he assured me, that he was on duty as the Madonna’s guard whenever she came forth. This Madonna is the same of whom Napoleon, when playing his part on this stage, asked an interview, and who, after a conference of some length, was observed to drop a tear!! Though it was the month of November, and the operation a dangerous one in times of cholera, by the clerical command all constituting the procession, saving our friend and his men, marched barefoot. Arrived at the Grande Place, on a kind of scaffolding raised there, appeared a priest to address the multitude; who vociferated with the whole power of his lungs, commanding that they should prostrate themselves on the cold pavement, and telling them that this scourge had come upon them because they observed fasts less strictly, and because their faith and confidence in their clergy had declined.
“Each of you,” he exclaimed in conclusion, “ask pardon of heaven with meekness and penitence; say frankly, I am a sinner, a thief, an assassin; therefore pardon me.” It would seem he knew his congregation. Of the poor wretches who assembled that day, swarms had perished ere the close of the next; but there is, not far from Ancona, a small town or village, whose name I forget, which escaped the pestilence by reason of a miracle performed by its patron saint, the details of which Capt. de V——l saw on a printed affiche. When disposed to avert evil from his native place, the saint pushes up the lid of his heavy tomb, and agitates above it his hands streaming with blood. The adjutant of the 66th, talking with a man of this town, asked if any one really believed it had happened.
“Giacchè,” answered the Italian, “le dico che ho veduto, veduto cogli occhi miei.”
We are to start to-morrow, and I sent on a bandbox, and a man who came the length of the street to fetch it, grumbling when I had paid him well, I took from the table, which was in a corner of the half-lighted room, what I thought a few more baiocchi, and among them bestowed, most unworthily, a Napoleon.
9th October.
Left Bologna a little after sunrise, our good-natured hostess having got up early to prepare our coffee, à la Française, with her own hands; the horses pleased as ourselves to escape from their hot captivity. We rode for some distance still over the plain along the brink of the torrent Savena, but from Pianoro, the first post, the route ascends undulating in a succession of steep rises and falls, far more wearisome to horses than the broad way which, sweeping across the Alps, forced aside or pierced through every obstacle. The hills, some bare as those of Burgundy, clothed with chestnut, as we advanced, not having the bold character of the Alps’ mighty and lonely masses, but swelling like wave beyond wave, and in their details losing grandeur. On the whole, though admiring and enjoying the pure mountain air, and passing some spots of romantic beauty, (particularly one where the road was carried under a wall formed by the high cliff, while before us, on a tall crag, stood a lone church, and on the right hand far below, lay the valley, with its green hills close crowded and dotted with pleasant habitations,) our first day’s journey over the Appennine almost disappointed me in its tranquil beauty, as compared with the wild and grand Swiss passes. The heavy oxen toiling on their way, as they preceded the post-horses of travelling carriages, or the mules of waggons, added to the picturesque aspect of the country. Its breed of cattle is peculiarly beautiful, having the dun hide and black legs of the deer. We were to sleep at Lojano, a village under a hill with a fine gorge stretching below. I recommend the Pellegrino, the new inn on the Bologna side, clean and comfortable and having civil masters, and not the Posta, known to me only as bearing a bad character, and being immured in the dirty town. Our horses had a separate and good stable, enjoying the thick bed of fern, here substituted for that of Indian corn leaves, which made so bad a one at Bologna.
10th.
A lovely morning, and beauteous ride from Lojano through chestnut woods, which cover these hills, laden with the fruit now ripe and dropping, which, as it forms the chief food of the poor, the pretty peasant girls were busily employed collecting in their baskets. Those we saw were mostly fair and light-haired, and if they wanted the bold dark eyes of the Bolognese dames, their more delicate features would have served the sculptor for model. The heat became excessive as we approached Scaricalasino; the view thence is superb, we could distinguish the chain of the Alps and the plains of Lombardy, but not, as I hear is sometimes possible, the Adriatic. Past the town the road grew wilder and the ascents more rapid, and we shortly arrived at Filigare, the frontier, where the grand duke has built a new and handsome edifice for police station and custom-house. Pietra Mala is at no great distance, with its dirty town and church on a crag, and inn to which is linked a robber story. About half a mile to the right, a peasant pointed out the place occupied by the flame, which is so brilliant at night, as to light the neighbouring mountain. It covers a space of fourteen feet square, on a stony but fertile soil, as the vegetation almost touches the fire, which emits blue and red flames, and the earth beneath has neither crack nor hollow; it is believed by some naturalists to be the forerunner of a fearful volcano. At a short distance from Pietra Mala there is also a cold spring called by the natives “Acqua Buja,” which takes fire when approached by a lighted torch.