Most of those seized with the disease died, because no amount of reasoning and assurance, or experiments, could persuade them to take the medicine. Anisafine, the hunchback who sold water mixed with spirit of anise to the soldiers, when he saw the glass of the physician, closed his lips tightly and shook his head in refusal of the potion. The doctor tried to coax him with persuasive words and first drank half the liquid, then the assistants each took a sip. Anisafine continued to shake his head.
“But don’t you see,” exclaimed the doctor, “we have been drinking? But you....”
Anisafine began to laugh sceptically, “Ha! ha! ha! You took the counter-poison,” he said, and soon after he was dead.
Cianchine, simple-minded butcher, did the same thing. The doctor, as a last resort, poured the medicine between the man’s teeth. Cianchine spit it out wrathfully, overwhelmed with horror. Then he began to abuse those present, and died raging, held by two amazed gendarmes.
The public kitchens, instituted by charitably-disposed people, were at first thought by the peasants to be laboratories for the mixing of poisons. The beggars would starve rather than eat meat cooked in those boilers. Costantino di Corropoli, the cynic, went about scattering his doubts through his circle. He would wander around the kitchens, saying aloud with an indescribable gesture, “You can’t entrap me!”
The woman Catalana di Gissi was the first to conquer her fears. Hesitating a little, she entered and ate a small mouthful, waiting to notice the effect of the food and then took a few sips of wine, whereupon, feeling restored and fortified, she smiled with astonishment and pleasure. All the beggars were waiting for her to come out and when they saw her unharmed, they rushed in to eat and drink.
The kitchens are inside an old open theatre in the neighbourhood of Portanova. The kettles in which the food is prepared are placed where the orchestra used to sit. The steam from them rises and fills the old stage; through the smoke you see the scenery behind on the stage, representing a feudal castle in the light of the full moon. Here at noon-time gathers around a rustic table the tribe of the beggars. Before the hour strikes, there is a swarming of multi-coloured rags in the pit, and there arises the grumbling of hoarse voices. Some new figures appear among the well-known ones; noteworthy among whom is a certain woman called Liberata Lotta di Montenerodomo, stupendous as the mythological Minerva, with a regular and austere brow and with her hair strained tightly over her head and adhering to it like a helmet. She holds in her hands a grass-green vase, and stands aside, taciturn, waiting to be asked to partake.
However, the great epic account of this chronicle of the cholera is the War of the Bridge.
An old feud exists between Pescara and Castellammare Adriatico, which districts lie on either side of the river.
The opposing factions were assiduously engaged in pillage and reprisals, the one doing all that lay in its power to hinder the prosperity of the other, and as the important factor in the prosperity of a country is its commerce, and as Pescara possessed many industries and great wealth, the people of Castellammare had long sought with much astuteness and all manner of allurements to draw the merchants away from the rival town.