“No, signorina; it is at Capo di Monte. Do you prefer the Vomero?”
“Oh! dear, no. I think Capo di Monte very beautiful.”
He was holding my hand, as he wished me good-night. I thought what an odd question it was to ask me. What could it matter which I liked best? I told Mary I thought Don Emidio was sometimes a little absent, and hardly knew what he was saying. But I suppose Mary did not agree with me, for she only smiled and made no answer.
The next morning I overheard Mary lamenting to Frank about the way in which Paolino disturbed her rest, beginning, as early as half-past four, firing at the little birds in the garden. I used to envy that lad his faculty for early rising. The first streak of light through his shutterless window saw Paolino on the alert. And then he would go strolling out into the garden, leaning over the low wall that divided our entrance from the main road, hailing all his comrades on their way to their work, whistling and shouting to his sisters, who lived in a portion of the villa where we had originally thought of taking apartments but for its dirty and miserable condition. These noises so early in the morning, and close to our windows, were bad enough; but when to these the constant firing of a gun was added, Mary's powers of endurance failed. It would have been a waste of feeling to compassionate the birds, who flew away from Paolino's aim with perfect impunity. It was therefore from no apprehensions for the few songsters of a garden in Southern Italy that we complained. But all day long Paolino was absent at inopportune moments, attempting a hopeless massacre of sparrows and finches. He had often been scolded about it, but the instinct of sport in the boy was superior to any fear of being found fault with. When at length it reached such a pitch that Mary even was induced to complain, Paolino had to endure a sharp scolding from Frank. The result of which was that, a few hours after, he took the gun, with tears in his eyes, to Monica, requesting her to carry it to his father, that through him it might be returned to the friend who had lent him the fatal weapon. He alleged that he had not the moral courage to have the gun in his possession, and yet refrain from inordinate use of it; and thus, as he said, the only way was to put the occasion out of his reach. The little birds enjoyed peaceful matins ever after, and Paolino rose wonderfully in our esteem.
The roomy landau and the impish coachman were ready early to take us on our long excursion; while Pascarillo, the coachman's master, and the owner of many carriages, provided another conveyance for the rest of the party. Don Emidio went with Mary, Ida, and myself; Padre Cataldo and Frank with Mrs. Vernon and the other girls. We took the Posilippo road, intending to return by the Grotto of Puzzuoli. Nothing can be more beautiful than the view which greets you at the top of the hill, and which, in a steep winding descent, brings you to the town of Puzzuoli. [pg 554] To the left is a high bank of verdure covered with flowering shrubs, and here and there a goat browsing on some almost inaccessible peak. The sea always seemed to me to be even bluer here than in the Bay of Naples. We drive past places bearing some of the grandest names of antiquity; Puzzuoli itself was once a “little Rome”; Cicero's villa was here; here Sylla died. Temples unrivalled in beauty covered those hill-sides, and villas with umbrageous trees were dotted all over those flat plains where the willows wave their long, yellow twigs amid rows of tall poplars, and here and there a plane-tree. Here are the market gardens that supply Naples, or rather a portion of them. But all the land is full of sulphur springs, and it is only in certain seasons of the year that Puzzuoli and its neighborhood is fit for habitation. Then Neapolitans and strangers come to take the sulphur baths, the hateful vapors of which catch our breath as we pass. I have a growing sense of everything being unreal around me; and no length of time or habit removes the impression. The sea has swallowed up one-half of the spots sacred to classic memories. But where are the trees of Cicero's villa that Pliny praises? What wild havoc or gradual but most obliterating change has availed to wipe away all but the faintest traces of what once was looked on as a paradise? Fire and water alike have combined to erase the last relics of that luxurious pagan time. The volcanic action in all this part of Italy and the encroaching ocean have sufficed to wipe out all but the faintest indications of a state of luxury, wealth, architectural beauty, and lavish decoration to which old Phœnicia, Greece, and Rome had lent their aid in the long course of ages. Never was ruin greater, perhaps, since the beginning of the Christian era. Sodom and Gomorrah, Nineveh and Babylon, have passed away more entirely. But in Puzzuoli, Misenum, Cumæ, and Baiæ the ruin is more pathetic, from the fact that enough remains to betray how vast those villas and baths and temples once were, and how absolutely the aggressive force of silent nature has overpowered and swept away or buried the proud achievements of man.
We proceed from one marvel of destruction to another. The Mare Morto is to our right, shrunk to a tiny lake; and yet this was to have been, when completed, the great port for Roman merchandise. The same melancholy feeling of utter destruction and radical change in the whole aspect of the country fills the mind wherever we turn; and through all the excursions we made in this neighborhood, I never found it less; while Mary, who had been here many years ago, recollected having experienced the same impression, and found that it returned upon her, if possible, with fuller force. It may be as well to remind my readers that the ancient name of Puzzuoli was Puteoli. And perhaps in no one place are crowded, within a circumference of about twelve miles around it, so many and such intimate associations with pagan Rome and the old classic life. The crumbling tufa-banks by the road-side are filled with rectangular Roman bricks, the remains of baths connected with the villa residences and temples of antiquity. Also, there are considerable remains of Columbaria and large tombs. We passed beneath the Arco Felice, and, clambering up a high bank, reached the cottage of a vignaiuolo, [pg 555] and rested beneath an elm-tree while I made a drawing of Lago Fusaro and part of the Elysian Fields. We saw the Lake of Lucrinus, but the oysters are gone. We shuddered as we approached Avernus. The dense forest which once flung its black shadows on the waters has long ago been felled or died away. The wholesome mid-day sun shot laughing beams on the clear surface, disarmed of all preternatural horror. The Elysian Fields are, indeed, a smiling plain of land partially cultivated, and partially covered with trees and brush-wood, the king's favorite hunting-grounds. We women refused to enter the Sibyl's cave, liking neither damp nor sulphurous smells. The horrors of the surroundings are all swept away. The little birds fly over the once deadly Lake of Avernus as safely as from Paolino's harmless gun; and as we look back through the dim avenue of misty ages, it is curious to reflect that what is a dream of the past to ourselves was hardly less so to others who are now but shadowy representatives of a world gone by to us; for it was Agrippa whose engineering robbed Avernus of many of its terrors, and probably disturbed even the placid oysters of Lucrinus. Thus the sense of unreality grows upon us, as we visit one spot after another, and find the green tendrils of the young vine, the blue-purple blossoms of the vetch, and bright scarlet poppies covering with gay garlands the few vestiges of a world that is dead and gone. Yet even here I am tempted to repeat, “Le passé n'est pas mort, il n'est qu'absent,”[126] and yet how far absent! How the old gods have died away from their own sylvan scenes, and the nymphs fled, shamefaced, from lakes no longer solitary! Victor Emanuel will scare no dryads from their leafy bowers, and is hardly the man to trace the small footprint of the chaste huntress on the yielding moss, as he pursues the wild boar through what were doubtless once her covers. No laughing Bacchante peeps behind the trailing vine, or dances, with light, flowing tresses and scanty tunic, to the trilling of double pipes. The goats are here, but the satyrs are absent. The vines show promise of rich grapes; but Bacchus, grape-crowned, with the skin of the spotted pard across his sun-bronzed chest, and the tragic melancholy of liquid eyes with sleepy lids, is nowhere found; for, be it remembered, the god of wine was no drunken lout, but rather one who, at least in his ripe youth, was but quickened and inspired by the blood of the red grape.
The myths and fables have long ceased. As myths, they held a divine truth, dimly shadowed forth. As fables, they degenerated, like all half-truths, into wholesale errors. Then human depravity swept over them, and left its poisonous slime o'er all. We go back to the memory of those times with mingled feelings of wonder and of pain. But amid the decaying fragments of classic lore there shines forth one little incident which quickens our pulse, and bridges over all the succeeding ages with a touch of feeling that obliterates time and space. The words are few, but they are dearer to us than the epics of Virgil, or the letters of Cicero, or all else that may grace the memory of this lovely land: “The south wind blowing, we came the second day to Puteoli, where, finding brethren, we were desired to tarry with them seven days.”
“Finding brethren!” Yes, even here, beneath the shade of marble porticos, temple, and fane devoted to an infamous religion, the Name that is above every name was whispered by a few. The sign of the cross was secretly made by quiet inhabitants of Puzzuoli's noisy streets, the Virgin Mother was revered, and the words of S. Paul and S. Luke listened to as a message from above. And how little the citizens of Puteoli knew of the divine mysteries which were going on among them! And now, as if the wicked city had been in every sense too near the gate of hell, the volcanic flames have penetrated the earth's thin crust on all sides, and flung down and devoured the traces of brilliant, triumphant, and overbearing vice, leaving in its place a handful of Christian peasants and a few relics prized by the scholar and the antiquarian.
I must own to my readers that I am chiefly repeating Don Emidio's words, and that, as we approached Baiæ, I with startling indecorum exclaimed: “But it must not be forgotten that we have come here to eat oysters, whether or not the Lake of Lucrinus produces them.” We did eat oysters. We alighted at the humblest little wayside inn close to the shore. We sat beneath the trellised vine that covered the vast loggia. The lemons were gathered, as sauce for the oysters, in the garden below; the ruins of the circular temple of Venus or Mercury shone, deep red, in the light of the setting sun. The merry landlord and a half-dozen nondescript servants, men and maids, proposed to dance the tarantella for us. The women happened to lack beauty, and the men youth. But that was not our reason for declining the pleasure. The dance was doubtless innocent enough; but it was not often we were favored with the company of “Nostro Zio Prete,” our uncle priest, and we thought it more decorous not to order dances in his presence. I must explain to my readers that the peasantry in South Italy call a priest uncle when they do not call him father; and that in some of our excursions, when Padre Cataldo bargained about carriages or refreshment (and which must always be done if you do not want to be scandalously overcharged), they always protested that for no consideration would they attempt to impose on their uncle priest! Happily for us, our reverend uncle was a Neapolitan, and too well acquainted with the true value of the services we received for us to have any apprehension of being cheated in any expedition organized by him. Perhaps our host himself surmised our reason for declining the tarantella, for he did not press it; and returning to our carriage, we drove home by moonlight through the Grotto of Puzzuoli.