Gentle April opened all the flowers in the gardens, terraces, and balconies in Naples; wherever there was a little earth warmed by the sun, bedewed with rime, a flower sprang up. Common, uncultivated, popular flowers, quite a humble flora without refinements, having no exquisite colouring or scents, but bright, warm, bursting from the earth with profuse vegetation and plump, full petals. April made the big, sweet-smelling, blood-red roses blossom, and the pinks, beloved of the people—white, pink, variegated—written on as they poetically call them, as if these stripes were mystic words; then single and double stocks—white, yellow, red—that the town girls love; they grow them on the damp north balconies of Foria Street; and the mallow with green, perfumed leaves and little pink flowers; but above all, everywhere, roses and pinks—magnificent, velvety, almost arrogant roses, and rich, close pinks bursting their green envelope.
In the damp, dark squares of the low-lying quarters, from Santa Maria la Nova to Porto Piazzetta, from San Giovanni Maggiore to Santi Apostoli, in all these half-popular and cloistral, middle-class and archæological quarters, rose-sellers wandered about; some queer-looking hawkers with big baskets full of cut roses or slips, the root wrapped in a cabbage-leaf, giving such pathetic drawn-out cries that they reached the hearts of sentimental girls. The rose-girl comes into one of these little squares that are always soaking, dripping with dirty, black water, puts the basket on the ground, and sings on in a melancholy, drawn-out voice: 'Roses, lovely roses!' Then women's heads stick out of shops, balconies and gateways, attracted by the long, sad chant, full of melancholy, almost painful, voluptuousness.
Whoever has a few sous, or only one, buys these roses, the slips for the balconies, or cut ones to put before the Virgin, and to scatter, when faded, in the linen drawers. The girl, having sold part of her merchandise, lifts the basket on her head, and goes off, taking up her melancholy cry in the distance, dwelling on the roses' beauty.
That warm May-day all the seamstresses going errands, who found their lovers by chance at the street corners, carried a rose in their hands; all the common folk walking about in the narrow streets round Forcella wore pinks on their white muslin camisoles; the children out from school playing in the streets had flowers; even the servants had flowers on their market-baskets, laid on the provisions wrapped in a white towel.
Really, poetic sentiment was not the only reason that scattered flowers everywhere—at the street corners, in women and children's hands, on washing baskets, flour-sacks, fruit and tomatoes, in the big frying shops at Purgatorio ad Arco, and the old-clothes shops at Anticaglia; it was the quantity one could get for a penny: for a smile, a word, and flowers are so precious to humble folk, who love colour and are intoxicated with the slightest perfume. May-day! In that noon-day sun many dull, gloomy houses of Trinità Maggiore, Forcella, Tribunali, San Sebastiano, San Pietro a Maiella Streets, besides the flowers in the balconies, had put bright-coloured flags, old red damasks, yellow, bright, buttercup curtains, blue silk hangings edged with gold and silver, and many coloured stuffs, kept up in boxes for years, outside the railings for drapery.
The people that live in these tall, black, melancholy palaces, that only get the sun on the terraces, are patricians of old clerical families, very devout and pious, under the influence of all the great old churches around: the Gesù Nuovo, Santa Chiara, San Domenico Maggiore, San Giovanni Maggiore, Pietra Santa, the Sacramentiste, the Girolomini, San Severo, Donna Regina; and finally the influence of the old minster, the grand cathedral, so old, they say, it was a temple of the Sun in Naples' pagan times—or, rather, its early pagan times. There are rich, stern old middle-class families also in the high, dark houses who keep up the customs of their citizen forefathers, and have rigid monastic tendencies. These people, that bright May-day, had taken out of camphored chests silk draperies they had bought at the great factory Ferdinand of Bourbon set up at Terra di Lavoro, or from San Leucio, with its bright, gay factories, for weddings and baptisms held in their private chapels and oratories. A pious folk, that inherits faith in its blood, they are born, live, and die without doubting for a moment. They put all the repressed strength of fancy into that grand mystic dream that rises from the terrors of Hell to the supreme ecstasies of Paradise, having a horror of Purgatory, as if the flesh felt its warm flames; and, dreaming and dreaming on, they come to the last moment with eyes shut in invincible hope.
Besides the May roses and the hedge of pinks blooming on the balconies, in spite of want of sun, these pious folk had put out for rejoicings this May-day their brocades, damasks, and watered silks. May-day! The darkness of old Naples' streets was brightened up by that general wealth of sweet-smelling flowers, with petals scattered on the gray Vesuvian lava stones; and there being so many flowers everywhere, it seemed the sun must be there too. Its presence was felt up there, where the two narrow lines of tall palaces ended in a clear streak of soft blue sky—spring's thin azure. It seemed as if a white sun was down in these narrow openings, Tribunali and Forcella Streets, because so many coloured stuffs, such vivid draperies, waved from the balconies, windows, and terraces. In San Domenico Maggiore Square, especially, the ancient De Sangro and Carigliano Palaces had magnificent brocades; even San Severo Palace, that hides in a dark lane its gloomy vestibule, was dazzling with ancient stuffs. The fresh flowers in the shops, in the tiny balconies of poor houses that come by turns in old Naples with magnates' palaces, on the flat roofs and terraces, out in the air, between earth and heaven; the flowers carried by women, children, humble working people, artisans, beggars even—fresh flowers—formed the people's festival in honour of Naples' protector. That was the explanation, too, of the silk draperies, the gold and silver damasks, the tapestries; it was all the tribute of the old Naples' nobility and burghers to Naples' great patron.
May-day is lovely in Naples, from the air's caressing breath, from the vivid streak of blue sky that manages to make the darkest, most villainous streets gay. May-day is lovely, from the roses that bloom on all sides, seeming to grow from women and children's hands even, as well as all the common garden and field flowers. It is miracle-working San Gennaro's day. It is on May-day his relics are carried from the cathedral crypts—called Succorpo, or San Gennaro's Treasury—to Santa Chiara Church, so that the saint may deign, on the prayers of the people, to do the miracle of liquefying his blood. The Bishop of Pozzuoli's head, which was cut off by the executioner's axe, is set in an old gold mask. It bears the Bishop's mitre, enriched with precious stones, and sparkles with a thousand fires. The other relic is the coagulated blood, kept in a very fine crystal phial: through the cold dark clot of blood a straw is visible, going across it and immovable. It was gathered by pious folk present at the Bishop's martyrdom, and religiously preserved. This is the day, the fourth of the flowery, sweet-smelling May calends, that these relics go, borne in triumphant procession, from the cathedral to Santa Chiara Church.
Now, that year 188- it seemed as if the flower of faith grew more vigorously in the people's heart—that devotion to the city's patron burst forth more brightly; for since two in the afternoon the crowd had been rushing along to old Naples, obstructing the narrow streets, lanes and blind alleys. San Gennaro is profoundly popular in Naples, much—a hundred thousand times—more than the real first Bishop of Naples, Sant' Aspreno. But who remembers him? He is one of the forgotten ones of the martyrology, which has its shipwrecks in the sea of oblivion, such as happen in other seas.
Sant' Aspreno's little church stands in a lane in the Porto quarter, and is underground; one goes down thirty steps, below the level of the soil; it is merely an oratory, rude, dark, damp, and alarming, where Sant' Aspreno's stick is adored, the pastoral staff of Naples' first pastor. But who goes to Sant' Aspreno's? A few devout people and some lovers of archæological things. San Gennaro, before all the other saints—before Sant' Anna, the powerful old woman, or San Giuseppe, the patron of a good death, next in order to the Immaculate Virgin and the Eternal Father, who are worshipped in Santa Chiara. San Gennaro has the devotion of all lowly Neapolitan hearts to himself. Above all, he was a Neapolitan, born in that black, evil-smelling quarter, Molo Piccolo, where it seems his descendants still live, and take great pride in such an ancestor. He came of Naples common folk, and his family consists of some old working-women, who spend their time between work and prayer, carrying out the spiritual life—trying, at least, to reach their great ancestor's perfection in piety. Glorious San Gennaro, the Bishop who suffered martyrdom! His head was cut off by infidels at Pozzuoli, on a great marble stone, which is still preserved: it has a large scar, and three streaks of blood running down; the severed head, being cast into the sea, swam from Pozzuoli to Naples, the face keeping a deathly pallor from loss of blood.