While all this was going on, you cannot imagine the agony of mind I endured: weaker than a child, I was prostrated upon a sickbed by a long and wasting illness. My brain was dizzy. I wondered how the sun could shine so joyously on the bay and the city, which lies so magnificently along its spacious margin: to me it was a day of gloomy horror! The bells seemed to toll for the funeral of Despina. My mind was a chaos, and I would have hailed an eruption of Vesuvius, an earthquake, or any horrible convulsion which would have overwhelmed the whole city: but neither came to pass, and I lay stretched on my fever-bed, helpless, forgotten, and miserable. I drank cup after cup of wine; but there seemed a fire within me, which all the waters of the bay would not quench. The pain of my wounds, the wine I drank so rashly, and the fever of mind and body, soon made me delirious, and Santugo alone restrained me from sallying, sword in hand, into the crowded streets, to search for some imaginary foe.
That night, while yet the fever raged within me, and my brain whirled with the champagne I had drank, I arose, dressed, and armed myself, and issuing forth soon found my way to the closed gates of the convent. The streets were silent and dark; my thoughts were strange: even while my head swam and my knees tottered I imagined that I had the strength of a Hercules. Aware that I was mad with fever and wine, my pranks had some of the caution of sanity in them, and I shrank beneath the deep shadow of the cloisters when a passenger approached, or the moon streamed its light between the fleecy clouds which the south-west wind piled in gleaming masses over Naples.
At times I laughed bitterly; anon I wrung my hands, and cried aloud, "Despina—Despina! Anima mia!" and chanted some of our merry madrigals, till the hollow cloisters and the long vista of the empty street, gave back the ravings of folly and despair.
A new fit seized me; I became gloomy, and fled from the city to wander among the ruins of Queen Joanna's palace: a place rendered terrible to the superstitious fishermen by the tales of horror connected with it. From thence I wandered as far as that dreaded valley the Forum Vulcani; a spot filled with fabled terrors from time immemorial, and shunned by the vulgar of Naples. The superstition is that it is haunted by fiends and spirits, who toil and shriek through caverns of fire, watching that hidden gold, which (by day) the wretched lazzaroni have sought for centuries. At times the ground is covered with burning sulphur, and rent with chasms belching forth pitchy smoke, flames, or boiling water; which the fabled giants who are buried there vomit up from hell. Petrius Damianus supposes that purgatory lies beneath it, and tells of frightful noises, groans, and shrieks, issuing from clefts in the rocks; whereon sat monstrous shapes of birds and men, who, on the croaking of a gigantic raven, plunged headlong into the chasms, and appeared no more, at least not for many days.
At night, when viewed by the light of a setting moon or the flame of Vesuvius, the Forum Vulcani, with only its natural terrors, is gloomy enough: hemmed in by rocks of basalt, from the clefts of which the burning bitumen flashes forth at times, or white steam curls on the breeze—the ground thick with sulphur, and trembling with the throes of the mighty volcano in the distance, it has horrors enough for ordinary men; but that night it had none for me, and I startled the echoes of its rocks with my cries of "Despina!"
I again found myself beneath the convent walls of Spirito Santo, just as the city clocks were telling midnight; I was alone, and a strange thought occurred to me. I tore down a lamp, and demolishing a wooden railing, poured oil on the painted pales, and piling them against the door, set them on fire, laughing, and shouting "Despina!" as I fanned the flames with my hat; and when the blaze increased apace, I folded my arms within my mantle, and watched its rapid progress with the most intense satisfaction. Aim or object I had none: I was mad!—and yet I can remember the whole like some wild dream. The forked tongues of flame shot upward, and licked the wooden balconies and projecting eaves of the old convent, which was likely to be soon enveloped in fire. Its magnificent oratory, with columns of jasper and dome of marble—its shrines, tombs, and relics—the miraculous crucifix which spoke to Thomas Aquinas, the true cross, the Virgin's petticoat, and Heaven knows what more—now stood in greater peril than ever they did during the outrages of the mad fisherman of Amalfi.
The lazzaroni came yelling in thousands from every point; the whole Strada di Toledo was red with the blaze, and the Piazza di Mercato, and the façade of the Royal Palace, were all gleaming in light: even the starry vault above was sheeted with sparkling fire. Basta! how I laughed at the roaring flames and the clanking engines, from which the hissing water poured in streams—at the shrieking nuns, the shouting mob, and all the mingled dismay and uproar I had so suddenly caused. But, being soon discovered to be the author of the mischief, I was carried off by the Neapolitan guard, and lodged in prison; where three months' close confinement, with no other fare than hard crusts and cold water, cooled my blood so completely, that I came forth an altered man, and so heartily ashamed of my late extravaganza, that I resigned to the Duca di Florestan my commission in his battalion of the guards, and left the service.
With liberty, all my love for Despina returned; and circumstances which followed soon after raised my passion to its former height and ardour. One morning, on awaking, I found a little coloured billet laid on my pillow; tearing it open with hurried and trembling hands, I found it to be an invitation—from whom?—the Signora Abadessa of Spirito Santo, to visit her at my earliest convenience. How the little pink note came there, no one knew; and I was too much fluttered to inquire. There was an air of mystery in the affair that pleased me; and love and hope sprang up again. But aware that I had the treachery and revenge of a Calabrian woman to dread, together with the wrath of her gossip and well-known admirer the famous Bishop of Cosenza, I went well armed, taking a matchless poniard of Bastia steel in addition to my concealed pistols. Happily, however, such precautions were needless. I found the gay abbess an agreeable little woman; she gave me her hand to kiss, and welcomed me with a pleasant talkative manner which quite won me to her purpose. After rebuking me gently for my sacrilegious attempt to fire her convent, she bade me kneel to receive her blessing. I listened to her rebuke and received her benison in silence and distrust, wondering the whole time how so unusual an interview was to end. I thought of the bishop's sbirri, and the dungeons of the convent below us, and kept one hand in my bosom grasping my poniard.
The reverend lady began by a long preamble on the risk she ran in the disclosure she was about to make regarding the sister Brigida, as she named Despina; and then, making a long pause, she kept me on thorns of expectation, while observing with a keen glance the expression of my care-worn visage. I could not love Despina (the abbess continued) more than I was beloved in return; and taking pity upon me, she had consented to quit the convent, and become my bride, the moment I procured her a dispensation from those vows which bound her to the church—vows offered up on the expiry of her novitiate, and in an agony of sorrow for my supposed death. Blessed words! But they were my ruin! My brain whirled and my heart leaped with delight; throwing myself at the feet of the abbess, and pressing both her hands to my lips, I declared her my best friend—my good angel, and bestowed on her a thousand of those titles which flow so smoothly from an Italian's tongue, when his heart is overflowing with gratitude.
She rang a hand-bell, and the light form of Despina appeared at the iron grating of the parlour. I sprang towards her, but she averted her face: at first it was very pale, and seemed more lovely beneath the dark hood which shaded it; but a mantling blush overspread her cheek as she gave me her hand through the grating to kiss.