I had permitted Domenico to take up his quarters at a miserable hut on the beach, where he was fortunate enough to find provender, partly to spare the donkey the pain of carrying him and my portmanteau up so toilsome an ascent, and also in the hope that my baggage might gain a little advance in the morning’s march, and thus I began to ascend into the clouds alone, worn with heat and travel, and oppressed with a growing and, I fear, somewhat puerile sadness.
After a long and wearisome ascent, I had left the brightness and interest of the world behind me, and had entered an atmosphere which enveloped every object in a thick gray mist.
On reaching the convent of Capuchins, a dead man might have given me a more cheering welcome than I received from the spiritless and hair-clothed superior.
One of his bleak eyes looked full upon me and into me, while the other seemed employed in looking round me and beyond me.
On learning my object he assented with a slow scowl of sullen indifference, and without any pause or gesture indicating the smallest courtesy, he briefly told one of his subordinates to show me a vacant cell. I believe the rules of this order bind them to wretchedness, and they extend them to the stranger that is within their gates, for they offered me no refreshment, and mentioned no refectory. The cell appointed me was naked, windowless, bedless, a bedding of straw being all it afforded.
Never before or since have I felt the heart within me oppressed and borne down by so dense and palpable a gloom—unmanly, to be sure, I felt it to be. “What ails me?” said I; “what is the grievance? Shelter is here to-night, to-morrow there lies the way, and food can be procured. ‘Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me?’”
No answer could be given, but the questions were not asked in vain. I began to turn my displeasure from the monks to myself, and presently recovered a more hardy tone of mind. I left the convent and went into the little square of the town. The mountain cloud had dispersed, and a party of Sicilian loungers attracted me to the shop of a little fruiterer, where I bespoke some dinner, and learned with joy they could accommodate me with a bed, which I greatly preferred to returning to the convent.
Whilst dinner was getting ready I walked out to look about me and to summon a cicerone to my aid, that I might see the remarkable Roman antiquities for which this place is famous. I then, though very tired, placed myself in the hands of the voluble cicerone, who took me to the large ancient theatre, finely situated in a basin or natural crater formed in the summit of the mountain.
A hasty view would at that moment have satisfied me, for I was weary and wanted food, but when I would have gone away the cicerone forcibly detained me, and placing me in the remotest ring of the vast auditory, proceeded leisurely to the stage and began a long oration, ridiculous in itself, but illustrating how well the situation was calculated to carry the voice of the actor to the remotest spectator. Reluctant as I was to interrupt so remarkable and novel an exhibition as a Sicilian peasant spouting to my solitary self in the midst of the lonely mountains from the ruins of a Roman stage, it lasted so long that I was compelled to cut it short, telling him I could have fancied him a shade of the Roman Roscius, a name he appeared well acquainted with, and with a low bow attributed the comparison to my excellency’s goodness.
On returning to my little hotel I found dinner ready, after which I went to the convent stables to see to my horse; and the bed that I made for him not a little astonished the friar who admitted me, and from curiosity, I suppose, observed, and to a certain extent assisted, my operations. “Such a bed,” he informed me, “was something too luxurious even for a good Christian.” He said no more, but his look added, what must it be for a heretic’s horse.