—I have found some of them, he tells me readily, with a rather excited tone. I am taking these things to Sarno where my wife and children are. They have no place where to sleep. But I am coming back at once. I am a man, I can work. I am coming back day after to-morrow. I want to work here.
—And what will you do?
—What they'll give me to do? Have you seen all those men on the square? They are not from Ottaiano, they are from Marigliano, Pomigliano, and other countries, all people coming here to seek work. They take away the stones and cinders, and ask a great amount of money. Well, this must be done by us, from Ottaiano. Also gratis, even if they don't give us for it but the soldiers' ranch.
The country is ours, the trouble is ours, we must repair it. And he ties with a rope his few things, loads them on the cart with a firm and decided air.
The Babies
Speaking with people, I find that the most touching episodes are those concerning the babies.
How heart-rending the cry and screams must have been of the parents and relatives who were trying to gather them, that they might take them away, lifting in their arms the youngest, tying to their clothes the largest, what a tearing cry must have been heard under the terrible shower of burning stones, lappillus, and ashes! Many of these children, got lost through the country in that dark night, their parents, not finding them, but after three days at long distances, while for three days, they believed them dead and wept desperately over them! The boarders of Ateneo Chierchia ran out helping the younger ones, and carried them on their shoulders wrapped in blankets that they might not be wounded, and in these conditions they fled through the terrible night. The soldiers who had come from Nola during the day gathered a number of other children, and fed them, keeping them with them till the following days, when they could be returned to their parents. As for mothers, in that terrible flight, half wild with despair, they wrapped the little ones in their dresses and shawls thus repairing them from certain death. A poor lady, who had a four months old baby, hid it under her arms, covered it with a basket, and thus carried it for eleven miles, on foot, at night, the baby however quietly sleeping under its shelter. The children of one of the teachers in Ottaiano, took their father who was very ill, closed him in a kind of covered box, and carried him so, on their shoulders till Caserta. The poor man naturally died there of his former trouble, but his children can say that they have saved him from dying under the stones of Ottaiano. Strange to say in this flight of fourteen thousand persons, not one single baby has died, and the people from Ottaiano say, that this is a miracle of the Madonna, a true, real miracle, and every mother clasping her child alive in her arms, has been obliged to believe in this miracle.
A witness.
From the ruins of his beautiful house, from the flowered terrace, covered for one meter with vulcanic stones and cinders, comes Luigi Scudieri, a friend of ours, a witness of the great cataclism. His gay and open expression has not changed, his family is saved, all of them, from his old parents to his children. The palaces of his noble and powerful family have tumbled down one after the other and their rich fabrics, their vast territories are now buried, for many, many years perhaps. Their fortune is compromised, yet he is back here since four or five days, back in Ottaiano, actively busying himself around, advising, guiding, conforting the more desolate, the desperate, helping every one, speaking to every body.