“Let us go, Emilio! You hear what the Signorina says.”
“Very well,” said Artois.
His voice was reluctant, even cold. Vere glanced at him quickly.
“Would you rather stay here, Monsieur Emile?” she said.
“No, Vere, no. Let us go and see the fun.”
He smiled at her.
“We must keep close together,” he added, looking at the Marchesino. “The crowd is tremendous.”
“But they are all in good humor,” he answered, carelessly. “We Neapolitans, we are very gay, that is true, but we do not forget our manners when we have a festa. There is nothing to fear. This is the best way out. We must cross the Mercato. The illuminations of the streets beyond are always magnificent. The Signorina shall walk down paths of fire, but she shall not be burned.”
He led the way with Vere, going in front to disarm the suspicion which he saw plainly lurking in Emilio’s eyes. Artois followed with Hermione, and Gaspare came last. The exit from the enclosure was difficult, as many people were pouring in through the narrow opening, and others, massed together outside the wooden barrier, were gazing at the seated women within; but at length they reached the end of the Piazza, and caught a glimpse of the Masaniello doll, which faced a portrait of the Madonna del Carmine framed in fire. Beyond, to the right, above the heads of the excited multitude, rose the pale-pink globe of the fire-balloon, and as for a moment they stood still to look at it the band struck up a sonorous march, the balloon moved sideways, swayed, heeled over slightly like a sailing-yacht catching the breeze beyond the harbor bar, recovered itself, and lifted the blazing car above the gesticulating arms of the people. A long murmur followed it as it glided gently away, skirting the prodigious belfry with the apparent precaution of a living thing that longed for, and sought, the dim freedom of the sky. The children instinctively stretched out their arms to it. All faces were lifted towards the stars, as if a common aspiration at that moment infected the throng, a universal, though passing desire to be free of the earth, to mount, to travel, to be lost in the great spaces that encircle terrestrial things. At the doors of the trattorie the people, who had forsaken their snails, stood to gaze, many of them holding glasses of white wine in their hands. The spighe arrosto, the watermelons, were for a moment forgotten on the stalls of their vendors, who ceased from shouting to the passers-by. There was a silence in which was almost audible the human wish for wings. Presently the balloon, caught by some vagrant current of air, began to travel abruptly, and more swiftly, sideways, passing over the city towards its centre. At once the crowd moved in the same direction. Aspiration was gone. A violence of children took its place, and the instinct to follow where the blazing toy led. The silence was broken. People called and gesticulated, laughed and chattered. Then the balloon caught fire from the brazier beneath it. A mass of flames shot up. A roar broke from the crowd and it pressed more fiercely onward, each unit of it longing to see where the wreck would fall. Already the flames were sinking towards the city.
“Where are Vere and the Marchesino?”