Of course I ask him to tell me all about the destruction of Ottaiano, but notwithstanding his natural brightness, he gets confused and troubled while he speaks.
—Dear Donna Matilde, in the first hours of Saturday night, I must confess, we were not much preoccupied. As you know, we have had several showers of cinders here in Ottaiano, but they were short and harmless. Nothing was to be feared, that evening, as I tell you, but towards mid-night the preoccupation began. The crater had fallen in, and at every breath of the Vulcano, a more and more increasing fall of ashes came down, passing over the mountain of Somma which protects us, and striking the whole of our place. The alarm bells began to ring.
—How terrible! I exclaim.
—It was well they rang the bells he says. The peasants who had all returned home for the holy week, were all fast asleep, the women at the sound of the bells, came out from their houses, running madly away, and to be sure many more would have died had the bells not rung.
—How many died here in Ottaiano?
—About seventy, and even those might have been saved, but the night was so dark and the fall of ashes so thick.
—Did they all seem to lose their mind?
—In the beginning no! I telegraphed to Naples, and the poor telegraph operator who sent my telegram, and whose courage and devotion should be enhanced, sent these telegrams under the flashes of the mountain.
Twice the electric shocks threw her down. One only of my three wires, the one to the Military Comand reached its destination.
—And your family, I ask?