The talk drifted from one archæological matter to another. Athol told us of Boni’s last discoveries in the Forum, the tombs under Trajan’s column; the “finds” made by Goclaire, the Frenchman, on the Gianiculum; why the excavation at Herculaneum had been given up:—The peasant owners of the land, seeing so much said about it in the papers, believe their land covers priceless treasures, and will not allow a spade to be put into the earth until a vast sum of money is deposited beforehand to indemnify them for the buried treasure that may be found. Though the talk veered lightly from one subject to another, it always came back to Pompeii and Herculaneum, to that old, old disaster, that volcanic horror of nineteen centuries ago, and yet at that very moment, though we did not know it, a worse devastation had again laid waste the beautiful treacherous land of southern Italy.
The party broke up in high spirits. Vera, followed by the ecstatic puppy, came into the hall with us. I see her vivid face, her white and silver dress, as she stood below the enormous Russian bear that eternally climbs a pine tree in her vestibule; I can see the gay graceful gesture of her hand as she waves us a last good night.
The moment’s uneasiness that had fallen upon us when Lombardi spoke of the earthquake in Calabria was forgotten. If they are short of news, the Roman papers publish rumors of the Pope’s illness, an earthquake in Calabria, or war between Germany and France, with strict impartiality. It was the old story of “wolf, wolf.” We were as deaf to the first rumble of the storm, as a few days before we had been deaf to the last war scare.
Nothing but a death in the house has ever made so sharp a difference as I knew between the evening of the 28th of December and the morning of the 29th, for it was only on Tuesday, the day after the earthquake, that we in Rome began to understand—but only began to understand—that the greatest disaster of European history had stricken Italy, our Italy, the world’s beloved. To each of us our own country is really dearest; we hope to die and lay our bones in the land where we were born. But Italy, like a lover, for a time makes us forget home, kin, native land, in an infatuation heady and unreasonable as lover’s love. The spell may be broken, never forgotten. This is the reason the whole civilized world not only shuddered, but suffered with Italy in the dark hour as it could have suffered for no other country.
The first news came from Catanzaro, Menteleone, and the other least damaged districts. Messina and Reggio were silent; their silence was ominous. Tuesday was a day of fear and restlessness. We lived from hour to hour, waiting for the extra editions of the papers, hoping, always hoping, that the rumors that every moment grew more grave might prove exaggerated.
“Calabria and Sicily flagellated by earthquake. Enormous damage. Towns in ruins, many dead and wounded. A tidal wave on the coast of Sicily,” such were the headlines of the first editions. Later came the dreadful news: “Messina and Reggio destroyed!”
In the Corso I met Athol. He had been very ill in bed but had struggled out to do his duty, to weigh the news, sift truth from rumor, flash the dreadful tidings to the earth’s end.
“How much must we believe?” I asked him.
“Such reports are always exaggerated at first,” he answered.
We soon learned the first reports did not begin to tell the story.