“A strange guide for such a place!” said Patsy.
Strange indeed! Coffins everywhere, and babies in grandams’ arms—the new life pushing aside the old, as the green oak leaves come out beneath the brown.
As Caterina led the way up the sunny slope, between cypresses and roses, she pointed out the tottering and broken monuments; the earthquake had wrought strange havoc here. The chapel of the Cavallieri di Messina with its fine Ionic colonnade was a ruin; some of the tombs were wrenched open.
“Perhaps these dead, like ourselves, thought that the last day had come,” said Caterina.
A wine cart loaded with casks of wine, with a coffin lashed at the back, passed us. It was followed by two women with grim set faces—no tears, they were all shed long ago. Caterina paused by the grave of the patriot, La Farina, picked a red rose and handed it to me with a shy smile. From the upper terrace we looked down on a plain, furrowed as if for planting. A long line of men were digging a trench. Piles of plain unmarked wooden boxes—there must have been several hundreds—were stacked on the ground.
“These might be packing cases for dry-goods,” said Patsy. “There’s not the faintest suggestion of the human form, not even the sloping line of the shoulders, to show what they are!”
“Will there be no service, no benediction?” I asked Caterina.
“God has already given them benediction enough,” she replied.
Messina is like a battle-field; there is too much haste for funeral pomp; nothing remains to be done but get the poor human remains out of sight, under ground as soon as possible. From time to time the Archbishop visits the campo santo, blesses the dead en masse, and sprinkles holy water on the long brown mounds.
As we watched the men delving in the fosse, a gay little painted carretto passed, driven by a blond lad with a roguish face and a rose behind his ear. He sat upon two coffins, whistling merrily.