"The aide-de-camp went into the house again with the list of the three new officers; the Vardarelli were standing by their horses, when suddenly there was a great confusion and movement in the crowd, which opened in various places, and down every street leading to the square, a column of Neapolitan troops was seen advancing. The Vardarelli were surrounded on all sides. Perceiving at once that they were betrayed, they sprang upon their horses and drew their sabres; but at the same moment the general took off his hat, which was the signal agreed upon; the command, 'Faccia in terra,' was heard, and the spectators, throwing themselves on their faces, the soldiers fired over them, and nine of the brigands fell to the ground, dead or mortally wounded. Those who were unhurt, seeing that they had no quarter to expect, dismounted, and forming a compact body, fought their way to an old castle in which they took refuge. Two only, trusting to the speed of their horses, charged the group of soldiers that appeared the least numerous, shot down two of them, and succeeded in breaking through the others and escaping. The woman owed her life to a similar piece of daring, effected, however, on another point of the enemy's line. She broke through, and galloped off, after having discharged both her pistols with fatal effect.
"The attention of all was now turned to the remaining twenty Vardarelli, who had taken refuge in the ruined castle. The soldiers advanced against them, encouraging one another, and expecting to encounter an obstinate resistance; but, to their surprise, they reached the gate of the castle without a shot being fired at them. The gate was soon beaten in, and the soldiers spread themselves through the halls and galleries of the old building. But all was silence and solitude; the bandits had disappeared.
"After an hour passed in rummaging every corner of the place, the assailants were going away in despair, convinced that their prey had escaped them; when a soldier, who was stooping down to look through the air-hole of a cellar, fell, shot through the body.
"The Vardarelli were discovered; but still it was no easy matter to get at them. Instead of losing men by a direct attack, the soldiers blocked up the air-hole with stones, set a guard over it, and then going round to the door of the cellar, which was barricadoed on the inner side, they heaped lighted fagots and combustibles against it, so that the staircase was soon one immense furnace. After a time the door gave way, and the fire poured like a torrent into the retreat of the unfortunate bandits. Still a profound silence reigned in the vault. Presently two carbine shots were fired; two brothers, determined not to fall alive into the hands of their enemies, had shot each other to death. A moment afterwards an explosion was heard; a bandit had thrown himself into the flames, and his cartridge box had blown up. At last the remainder of the unfortunate men being nearly suffocated, and seeing that escape was impossible, surrendered at discretion, were dragged through the air-hole, and immediately bound hand and foot, and conveyed to prison.
"As to the eight who had refused to come to Foggia, and the two who had escaped, they were hunted down like wild beasts, tracked from cavern to cavern, and from forest to forest. Some were shot, others betrayed by the peasantry, some gave themselves up, so that, before the year was out, all the Vardarelli were dead or prisoners. The woman who had displayed such masculine courage, was the only one who finally escaped. She was never heard of afterwards."
M. Dumas finds that the climate of Naples, delightful as it is, has nevertheless its little drawbacks and disadvantages. He returns one night from an excursion in the environs, and has scarcely got into bed, when he is almost blown out of it again by a tornado of tropical violence.
"At midnight, when we returned to Naples, the weather was perfect, the sky cloudless, the sea without a ripple. At three in the morning I was awakened by the windows of my room bursting open, their eighteen panes of glass falling upon the floor with a frightful clatter. I jumped out of bed, and felt that the house was shaking. I thought of Pliny the Elder, and having no desire for a similar fate, I hastily pulled on my clothes and hurried out into the corridor. My first impulse had apparently been that of all the inmates of the hotel, who were all standing, more or less dressed, at the doors of their apartments; amongst others, Jadin, who made his appearance with a phosphorus box in his hand, and his dog Milord at his heels. 'What a terrible draught in the house!' said he to me. This same draught, as he called it, had just carried off the roof of the Prince of San Feodoro's palace, including the garrets and several servants who were sleeping in them.
"My first thought had been of an eruption of Vesuvius, but there was no such luck for us; it was merely a hurricane. A hurricane at Naples, however, is rather different from the same thing in any other European country.
"Out of the seventy windows of the hotel, three only had escaped damage. The ceilings of seven or eight rooms were rent across. There was a crack extending from top to bottom of the house. Eight shutters had been carried away, and the servants were running down the street after them, just as one runs after one's hat on a windy day. The broken glass was swept away; as for sending for glaziers to mend the windows, it was out of the question. At Naples nobody thinks of disturbing himself at three in the morning. Besides, even had new panes been put in, they would soon have shared the fate of the old ones. We were obliged, therefore, to manage as well as we could with the shutters. I was tolerably lucky, for I had only lost one of mine. I went to bed again, and tried to sleep; but a storm of thunder and lightning soon rendered that impossible, and I took refuge on the ground-floor, where the wind had done less damage. Then began one of those storms of which we have no idea in the more northern parts of Europe. It was accompanied by a deluge such as I had never witnessed, except perhaps in Calabria. In an instant the Villa Reale appeared to be a part of the sea; the water came up to the windows of the ground-floor, and flooded the parlours. A minute afterwards, the servants came to tell M. Zill that his cellars were full, and his casks of wine floating about and staving one another. Presently we saw a jackass laden with vegetables come swimming down the street, carried along by the current. He was swept away into a large open drain, and disappeared. The peasant who owned him, and who had also been carried away, only saved himself from a like fate by clinging to a lamp-post. In one hour there fell more water than there falls in Paris during the two wettest months in the year.
"Two hours after the cessation of the rain, the water had disappeared, and I then perceived the use of this kind of deluge. The streets were clean; which they never are in Naples except after a flood of this sort."