At Naples, returning at night from the hotels in the lower town to those on the ridge of the hill, a gentleman engaged me in conversation and strolled along by my side. Suddenly, in the most desolate part of the road, he blew a whistle, and another man leapt out of the bushes, and both rushing upon me demanded “L’orológio e la bórsa.” I declared that I had neither watch nor purse. They insisted on my turning out all my pockets, which contained only three francs in paper and sixteen soldi in copper. Then they demanded my ring. I refused, and said it was no use for them to try to get it; it had not been off my finger for more than thirty years: it would not come off. They struggled to get it off, but could not. Then they whispered together. I said, “I see what you mean to do: you mean to cut off my finger and then drop me into the sea (which there—opposite the Boschetto—is deep water); but remember, I shall be missed and looked for.”—“No, we took good care to ascertain that first,” said my first acquaintance; “you said you had only been two days in Naples (and so I had): people who have been only two days in Naples are never missed.”—“But I do know Naples well—bisogna esaminarmi sopra Napoli,” I protested. “Dunque chi fu la Principessa Altamonti?”—“Fu figlia del Conte Cini di Roma, sorella della Duchessa Cirella.”—“E chi è il Principe S. Teodoro.”—“Fu Duca di S. Arpino, se maritava con una signora Inglese, Lady Burghersh, chi sta adesso Lady Walsingham.” After this they decided to let me go! But the strangest part of all was that the first brigand said, “After this scene you will not be able to walk home, and a carriage from the guardia costs sixty centesimi; therefore that sum I shall give you back,” and they counted twelve soldi from the sum they had taken. It is this fact which makes me speak of the men who attacked me at Naples as brigands, not as robbers.
I spent a few days delightfully in beautiful Capri, but most miserable were my after travels in the desolate wind-stricken plains or malaria-teeming swamps of wretched Calabria, of which I had formed a lofty estimate from Lear’s almost wholly imaginary drawings. Each place I had to visit seemed uglier and more poverty-stricken than the last, but perhaps came to a climax at Cotrone, where the windowless prison-van (being the only vehicle in the town) was sent to meet us, arriving by the night-train at the distant desolate station, and where the stairs of the hotel were crowded with beggars, who had nowhere else to sleep, lying in heaps, and swarming with vermin.
I see that I wrote to Miss Leycester—“Calabria was indescribably horrible, its poisonous swamps and arid plains too hideous for words: nothing whatever but dry bread to eat: the so-called inns the filthiest of hovels: the people ruffians: the remains of the Greek cities a few stones apiece.” I pushed on to Reggio and Scilla. But soon I became so ill that I fled to Venice, where I was fit for nothing but to float in a gondola on the breast of ocean till I grew better.
Journal.
“Venice, April 25, 1882.—It was by a happy accident that I found myself here on St. Mark’s Day. Madame von Usedom[370] called for me in her gondola, and we went together to S. Marco at 10 A.M. Most glorious it looked, glints of sunlight falling here and there on the golden walls and waving peacock-hued pavement, and violet shadows resting on all the inner recesses of arcades and cupolas, through which the grand mosaic forms of the saints were dimly visible. Crowds of people were present, yet in that vast space many thousands can move with ease. It is only a few days since the Patriarch, newly elected and a cardinal, entered Venice in triumph, followed by three hundred gondolas, standing at the prow of his barge, in his new scarlet robes, blessing the people. He is a young man, but is greatly beloved,[371] and every eye followed him as the grand procession swept chaunting round the church, and he was almost borne along by his huge golden robes, held up by the white-mitred attendant bishops of Chioggia and Torcello.