Vesuvius vouchsafed three separate eruptions to us during our sojourn at Naples, and we made a pilgrimage up the mountain while the fire-stones were falling and the lava flowing in all directions, much to the consternation and disgust of our guides.
OUR DOCTOR RECITES DANTE
But to return from Nature to human nature, and to speak first of our beloved physician.
Michael Giardano was the son of an Italian by an English woman, and combined in his own person the best characteristics of both nations. He was eminently handsome, well skilled in his profession, a scholar, a sportsman, and an artist. He nursed me and my sister, and our faithful Henry, through bad attacks of fever, and as far as I was concerned, assisted in my recovery by the opiates he administered in the form of long recitals from favourite passages in Dante as he sat by my bedside.
Poetry is a medicine which I have always found efficacious in my own case, either to a body or mind diseased, and I was reminded of my Neapolitan friend not long ago, when another distinguished member of the same profession, and another valued friend of my own, administered the same remedy, only then the tonic was Goethe instead of Dante.
Giardano was a favourite with man, woman, child, and dog, for he set the paw of our Scotch terrier when run over by the carriage. “Boch-Dhu” was very much pleased with the care he bestowed on her, and, I grieve to say, showed some dissimulation in order to attract his notice. Long after she had become sound, the instant the door opened, and the Doctor appeared, this deceitful individual would limp to the chair and, sitting beside her medical attendant, offer him her paw!
Poor Michael Giardano! Many years afterwards I picked some violets from his grave in the Protestant cemetery at Rome, where an elaborate tomb had been erected to his memory by an English lady, who became his wife, not long after we had bidden him adieu at Naples. There could be no doubt of the admiration and affection in which she held this gifted man, whose epitaph she wrote, detailing his many virtues and talents, while the sculptured sides of the monument symbolised the many pursuits in which he was proficient.
One evening, riding with my eldest brother, we resolved to go up to the castle of Sant’ Elmo (then the Chelsea Hospital of Naples) in order to view the sunset from the summit of the hill. When we arrived at the gates of the fortress, we found that we were too late to be admitted, but I looked so disappointed, and pleaded so piteously to be allowed to pass, that a soldier who was standing by offered to go in and ask the Commandant for his permission. The request was readily granted. We dismounted from our horses, and made our way on to the terrace, where we were welcomed by the good old general, who was enjoying his coffee, and kindly asked us to join him. He was already long past middle age, with a military bearing, for he had seen much good service, and with a kind, genial manner, which warmed into enthusiasm when he found we spoke his language with fluency. He did the honours of the place and of the pretty garden which embellished the grim old castle, and the magnificent view it commanded; for Naples lay beneath us, the blue Mediterranean dotted with islands, the country towards Baiæ on one side, Pompeii on the other, stretching out into the distance, the Villa Reale, enlivened by numerous groups of gay pedestrians, and the fire and smoke of Vesuvius in the back-ground.
CASTLE OF SANT’ ELMO
We lingered on the terrace a long time, until the moon rose over the bay, and then, bidding our new friend good-night, gratefully accepted his invitation to return there again, and, above all, to bring my sister and my brother Charles, who were shortly expected from England, to enjoy that beautiful prospect.