Naples Past and Present Part 6

He who will see the churches of Naples must rise betimes, since ancient custom closes them, for unknown reasons, from eleven o'clock till four. Some say the poor man will get nothing for his pains. But this is not so. It is indeed impossible that sacred buildings in a city so old and famous as Naples should be devoid of interest. Here, as elsewhere, they reflect the strong emotions of the citizens, their sorrows and their aspirations; and though it is true that many a once n.o.ble building has been daubed over with unmeaning ornament so freely that one has trouble in discovering the pure taste with which the builders wrought it, yet there is not a church in Naples which does not set vibrating some chord either of beauty or poignant a.s.sociation.

No man can know the city or its people if he neglect the churches.

Past and present jostle each other perpetually there, and the effigies of kings look down with fine grave eyes on the filthy peasant women lifting up their children to kiss the feet of the dead Christ.

I have paused in the Strada Quercia opposite the Gesu Nuovo, once, as I have said before, the palace of the San Severini, Princes of Salerno. It was on that fine doorway that the Prince affixed the inscription "An old sparrow does not enter into the cage," as he stood beneath his ancestral gateway listening for the mule team with its jingling bells which gave him his chance of life and safety. Perhaps he waited under this old archway till he saw the beasts with high-piled burdens coming up this way from the Mercato, and slipped in silently among the swarthy knaves who led them, and so forth from the city and away to France, where he hatched a scheme of vengeance which destroyed the King, his enemy. The tinkling of those mule-bells as they went up this narrow street in the night fell on no ears that heeded them, yet in truth and earnest they were ringing the dirge of the House of Aragon.

The interior of the Gesu is among those which arouse the citizens of Naples to enthusiasm. It is not without grandeur, but over-decorated, and on my mind it leaves but little sense of pleasure.

But from this archway where I stand I can see a church far older and more interesting, one indeed which yields in fame to none in Naples.

It is Santa Chiara, whose dignified facade rears itself with twin towers in the cool shadow of the courtyard, a name famous not only in the ecclesiastical history of Naples, but in the legal also, having given its t.i.tle to a great body of state councillors which once met here. It was the royal chapel of King Robert the Wise, third among the monarchs of his house, and the only prosperous one out of the whole number, though even he was pursued by sorrows, and by remorse too, unless the constant suspicions of the centuries have erred.

For the tale goes that Robert knew better than any other the cause of that sudden illness which carried off his elder brother, Charles Martel, King of Hungary, when, towards the close of their father's life, he came to Naples to arrange for the succession. Stories of mediaeval poisonings are to be received with caution. No man who glances round Naples to-day, swept and garnished as it has been by advancing science, will find it hard to understand how swiftly disease may--nay, must have struck in those crowded dirty streets six centuries ago. Yet Robert was believed to have seized the throne by fratricide. This Church of Santa Chiara was his atonement for the crime, and by its high altar he sleeps for ever, robed as a monk and throned as a king, beneath a monument of rare beauty, on which Petrarch wrote the jingling epitaph, "Cernite Robertum, regem virtute refertum."

"Chock full of virtue." Such was Petrarch's judgment on King Robert dead, and doubtless he believed it, for the King's Court was splendid, poets and scholars were held in honour, and Florentines especially.

Innocent or guilty, Robert ruled with a magnificence which makes his reign the one bright spot in the troubled history of the Anjou sovereigns; and posterity, which has little good to say of any of them, remembers gratefully that he procured the laurel crown for Petrarch, and gave his protection to that rake Boccaccio.

Let us go in and see his church. It is rectangular, and has no aisles, while a long range of chapels upon either hand recall irresistibly the quirk recorded of King Robert's son, when his father, proud of the progress which the church was making, brought him in to admire its fair proportions. The graceless lad gazed round, and it struck him that the chapels were not unlike so many mangers. So when the King pressed him for his opinion he remarked airily that the church reminded him of a stable, whereupon the King said angrily, "G.o.d grant, my son, that you be not the first to eat in those stalls!"

It was a prophetic speech, and one which must have returned many times on the King's memory, for the historian Giannone a.s.sures us that the first train of royal mourners who entered the new church were following the coffin of this very lad, King Robert's firstborn, and the hope of the realm.

The chief artist selected to adorn Santa Chiara with frescoes was no other than the great Florentine, Giotto. Petrarch, Boccaccio, Giotto!

How the best brains of Tuscany flocked to Naples in those days! The explanation of it was, apart from the natural attractions of a splendid Court, that when Charles of Anjou defeated and slew Manfred, he cast down by that act, and ruined throughout Italy, the party of Ghibellines, the Emperor's men, of whom Manfred, son of a great emperor, was naturally head. The Guelfs, the Pope's men, returned to Florence, whence they had been banished, and straightway the closest ties sprang up between the city on the Arno and the city of the Siren, so close that the money-bags of Florence saved Charles from ruin at least once.

So Tuscan poets and artists making the weary ten days' journey were a.s.sured that on the sh.o.r.es of the blue gulf they would find compatriots. Giotto came most gladly, and in the chapels of Santa Chiara he painted many scenes of Bible story, all of which were daubed over with whitewash by order of a Spanish officer a century and a half ago. He complained that they made the church dark. There is indeed one fresco left in the old refectory, now a shop. But Crowe and Cavalcaselle do not accept it as the work of the same hand.

So here, in the large, cool church, Giotto painted for many a day, alternating his labours perhaps with visits to Castel dell'Uovo, where he painted the chapel, now a smoky, useful kitchen! King Robert loved the man, so shrewd and cogent was his talk, and often came to chat with him in one place or the other. "If I were you, Giotto, I should stop painting now it is so hot," observed the King. "So should I, if I were you," returned the artist dryly. And one day, wis.h.i.+ng perhaps to warn Robert by how frail a tenure he held his throne, he painted an a.s.s stooping under one pack saddle and looking greedily towards another lying at his feet. Both saddles were adorned with crowns, and the explanation was that the a.s.s typified the Neapolitans, who thought any other saddle better than the one they bore.

The most beautiful works of art in Santa Chiara, if not indeed in the whole city, are the eleven small reliefs which run as a frieze along the organ gallery. The scenes are from the life of St. Katherine, martyr as well as saint. Dignified and tender, wrought with the rarest delicacy, yet inspired with astonis.h.i.+ng vigour, the graceful figures are in white relief upon a ground of black. Very memorable and lovely they appear, rebuking the corrupt taste which has begotten so much base ornament in Naples.

Next to this frieze the interest of Santa Chiara lies in its monuments, for in this Royal Chapel of Anjou many children of that house were buried. The King himself a.s.sumed the frock of a Franciscan monk before his death, craving for a peace which he did not find upon his throne, and lies rec.u.mbent therefore, attired humbly in his habit, while on a higher story of the monument he sits enthroned in all his earthly splendour, gazing down upon his church with those keen features which were characteristic of his house, the thin hooked nose, not unlike a vulture's beak, so strangely like that which one sees on the coins of his grandfather, murderer of Conradin. Uneasy were the lives of all the monarchs of that house; their throne was set in blood, and in blood it was perpetually slipping.

I left Santa Chiara by the northern door, which opens on a handsome double staircase descending to the courtyard. In this wide s.p.a.ce there is fine shadow, and, by contrast with the noisy street outside, the square is almost silent--a wondrous thing in Naples! Across the court, beside the archway by which I entered, rises the n.o.ble campanile, once planned on Gothic lines, but interrupted by the death of King Robert, and finished two centuries and a half later by an architect who transformed it into the cla.s.sic style. There are mean houses all around, occupied by people who care not one jot for King Robert or his lost design.

Down the incline of the courtyard, where Boccaccio may well have whispered guilty secrets to his Anjou princess, there loafs a hawker with his donkey, his head thrown back, his brown hat tilted picturesquely, bawling with iron throat the praises of his leeks and cabbages, while the donkey creeps on cautiously over the broken stones. In the Neapolitan speech he is the "padulano"--the man who comes from the swamp, by which is meant the low plain of the Sebeto, that muddy river which the railway to Castellammare crosses on the outskirts of the city. On this marshy ground grow quant.i.ties of early vegetables, and these it is which the padulano goes vaunting in his brazen voice. He needs his strength of lung, for see! on the highest story a woman has heard his bawling and comes out upon her balcony. At that height they do not bargain in words, but in signs, the universal language of the people. A few rapid pa.s.ses of the hands and the business is done. The woman lets down a basket by a rope; a few soldi are jingling in the bottom; the basket goes up packed with green stuff, and the padulano loafs on beside his patient donkey.

It is in these crowded quarters of the ancient city, these streets through which the noisy, swarthy, dirty people were seething just as they are now when Pompeii was a peopled town and the hawkers went up and down the streets of Herculaneum,--it is here that one can grasp most easily those peculiarities which fence off life in southern Italy from that of other regions in the peninsula. Here is neither the dignity of Rome nor the gracious charm of Tuscany, but another world, a life more hot and pa.s.sionate, more noisy and more sensuous, a character strangely blended out of the blood of many nations--Greek, Saracen, Norman, Spaniard--each of which contributed some burning drop to the quick glow of the Campanian nature, making it both fierce and languid, keen and subtle beyond measure when its interests are engaged, capable of labour, but not loving it, easily depressed, and when thwarted turning swiftly to the thought of blood. Here is difficult material for the statesman. Never yet, in all its vicissitudes of government, have these volcanic, elemental pa.s.sions been concentrated on any one great object. In the War of Independence Milan had its "Cinque Giorni"; Venice, led by Manin, struck a glorious blow at the oppressor; but Naples effected nothing till Garibaldi came with armies from without.

How the street swarms with curious figures! I stand aside in the opening of a side lane, and there goes past me a man carrying in one hand a pail of steaming water, while on his other arm he has a flat basket, containing the sliced feelers of an octopus, and a tray of rusks. At the low price of a soldo you may choose your own portion of the hideous dainty, warm it in the water and devour it on the spot.

Close upon his heels, bawling out his contribution to the deafening noises of the streets, comes the "pizzajuolo," purveyor of a dainty which for centuries has been unknown elsewhere. "Pizza" may be seen in every street in Naples. It is a kind of biscuit, crisp and flavoured with cheese, recognisable at a glance by the little fish, like whitebait, which are embedded in its brown surface, dusted over with green chopped herbs. I cannot recommend the dainty from personal knowledge, but Neapolitan tradition is strongly in its favour.

The pizzajuolo goes off chanting down a sideway, and I, moving on a little, still away from the Toledo and towards the older quarter of the town, find that the street has widened out into a small square, the Largo San Domenico, on the left of which stands the famous Church of San Domenico Maggiore, second in beauty to none in Naples, and perhaps less spoilt than many others by the hand of the restorer. The bronze statue of the saint stands on a pillar in the square, looking down on the palaces which were once the homes of Neapolitan n.o.bles, dwelling gladly in this centre point of the great city. Neither cavaliers nor ladies live here now. The world of trade and civic inst.i.tutions has slipped into their abandoned palaces, and enjoys the s.p.a.cious rooms and frescoed ceilings which were designed for the splendour of great entertainments.

On the southern side of the Largo, sloping towards the sea, runs the Via Mezzocannone, which, if antiquaries are to be believed, was the ditch skirting the city wall upon the western side in Greco-Roman days. It is a lane worth following, though narrow and somewhat fetid, for by it one may reach not only a certain very ancient fountain, the Fontana Mezzocannone, which is of itself worth seeing, but also the Church of San Giovanni Pappacoda, and by careful search may even find the bas-relief of Niccolo Pesce, of whom I spoke at length in a former chapter. But my course is eastwards. I turn up the steps, and enter the Church of San Domenico Maggiore by a door admitting to its southern transept.

The cool and silent chapel into which one steps is the most ancient part of the church, ma.s.sive and severe. The first glance reveals that the building must have been in a high degree esteemed a place of sepulture. The tombs are very numerous, and names of mark in the history of Naples appear on every side. Through the vaulted doorway leading to the main body of the church there stream long rolling melodies, the crash of a fine organ played triumphantly, and the grand music of a pure tenor voice, ringing high among the arches. The church is full of kneeling figures, among which others stroll about with little care for their devotions; while children, infinitely dirty, waddle up and down untended, as if the show were for their amus.e.m.e.nt only.

The chanting ceases, and the priests in their gorgeous vestments stream down the altar steps towards the sacristy. I have come at an unlucky moment! The sacristy at least will be closed till the priests have done unrobing! But no! The hawk-eyed sacristan has marked down the stranger, and hurries up obsequious and eager to detain me. I cannot think of leaving without seeing the most interesting sight in Naples--the coffins? "Si, sicuro! The very sarcophagi of all the princes of the House of Aragon." "But they are in the sacristy," I object, "and that is full of priests unrobing!" "Oh, you English, you odd people," hints the sacristan, with a shrug. "What does that matter?" If he does not care, why should I? And in another moment we are in the sacristy.

Clearly the sacristan knew his ground, and has committed no breach of manners; for among the crowd of ecclesiastics, young and old, which fills the long panelled chamber, some jovial, some ascetic, many chatting pleasantly, others resting on long seats, not one betrays the least surprise at the intrusion of a tourist bent on sightseeing. High dignitaries, arrayed like Solomon in his glory, make way courteously as the sacristan draws me forward, and standing in the centre of the vast apartment points out that the panelling ceases at half the height of the walls, leaving a kind of shelf, on which lie, shrouded in red velvet, to the number of five-and-forty, the coffins of the family of Aragon, and the chief adherents of their house.

Here, taking what rest remorse allows him, is that Ferdinand who trapped the barons in Castel Nuovo. His son Alfonso, who shared in that and other infamies, is not here. He lies in Sicily, whither he fled at the bidding of the furies who pursued him. But close by is his son, the young King Ferdinand, whose chance of redeeming the fame of his house was lost by death. And here is that luckless Isabella, d.u.c.h.ess of Milan and of Bari, whose husband, Duke Giovanni Galeazzo Sforza, was robbed of throne and life by his uncle Ludovic the Moor, the man who, more than any other, was accountable for all the woes and slavery of Italy. What bitter tragedies were closed when the scarlet palls were flung over those old coffins! Here, too, is the dust of the base scoundrel Pescara, archetype of treachery for all ages, at least of public treachery. In private life his heart may have been true enough, else how could his wife Vittoria Colonna have loved and mourned him as she did? It is no new sight to see a woman lay great love at the feet of a man who, on one view, is quite unworthy of it.

Her knowledge is the wider, and the account as she cast it may be the truer. Why need we be puzzled that we cannot make our balance agree with hers? How is it possible that we should?

On leaving San Domenico Maggiore, my desire is to pa.s.s into the Strada Tribunali, the largest and most important of the three streets which still cleave the city as they did in ancient days. The cross ways turning up by San Domenico are devious and narrow, evil alleys darkened sometimes by the high dead wall of a church or convent, at others bristling with life, from the foul "ba.s.si," the cellars which are the despair of Neapolitan reformers, where ragged women crouch over a chafing-dish of bronze, their only fire, and all the refuse is flung out in the gutter, up to the high garrets where the week's wash is hung out on a pole to dry. Not the freshest wind which blows across the sea from Ischia can bring sweetness to these alleys, or expel the wandering fever which on small inducement blazes to an epidemic and slays ruthlessly. There were high hopes of Naples when the "risanamento" was begun, that great scheme of clearance which was to let in fresh air and suns.h.i.+ne among the rookeries. But already the new tenements begin to be as crowded and as filthy as the old ones, and the better era is soiled at its very outset. One cannot make a people clean against its will. And then the suns.h.i.+ne! Week after week it is a curse in Naples. The old narrow streets made shadow, the new wide ones do not. Who knows whether the city will escape more lightly when the next epidemic comes? G.o.d grant it may! For the days of cholera in 1884 were more awful than one cares to think about.

Among these devious lanes lies the Chapel of San Severo, a shrine which everyone should visit, but one concerning which I have nothing to say that is not set forth in the guide-books. Had it been the Church of San Severo and San Sosio indeed, I could have told a grisly tale of poisonings; but that lies far down towards the harbour and we shall not pa.s.s it. At length I emerge in the narrow Street of Tribunals, and turning eastwards behold it running straight and crowded further than the eye will reach, a wilderness of bustling figures, a maze of balconies and garrets, bright shops high piled with fruit and vegetables, and butchers' stalls dressed with green boughs to keep off the flies. At a corner stands the booth of a lemonade seller, one of the most picturesque of all street merchants in this busy city. His golden fruit is heaped up underneath a canopy which shades it from the sun. Brown water-jars are reared among the fruit and a jet of water sparkling up sheds a cool dewy spray over oranges and lemons, dripping off their dark green leaves like dew. Many a pa.s.ser-by stops to look at the pretty sight, and the vendor's tongue is never still, "A quatto, a cinque, a sei a sordo, 'e purtualle 'e Palermo." In another month or two his stall will be far gayer, for the figs and melons will come in, and the "mellonaro" will pa.s.s the day in shouting "Castiellamare! che maraviglia! so' di Castiellamare! mellune verace! cu' 'no sordo vevo e me lavo 'a faccia!" With a water-melon one may drink and wash one's face at once! Who has not seen the street urchins gnawing at a slice of crimson melon, while the water streams out from among the black seeds, and does in truth make streaks of cleanliness at least upon their faces; for not the widest mouth can catch all the dripping juice.

In this ancient street one is at the heart of Naples. This strong pulse of life, this eager, abounding vitality has throbbed along this thoroughfare for more ages than one can count; and the sight on which we look to-day, the seething crowd, the straight house-fronts, the long street dropping to the east, is different in no essential from that which has been seen by every ruler of the city--Spaniard, Angevin, or Norman, yes, even by Greek and Roman governors--from days when the fires of Vesuvius were a forgotten terror, and the streets of Pompeii surged with just such another crowd as this. It is here, in this most ancient Strada Tribunali, that the traveller should pause before he visits the old buried cities. Here and here only will he learn to comprehend how they were peopled; and only when he carries with him in the eyes of memory the aspect of the cellars and the shops, the crowded side streets and the pandemonium of noise, will he succeed in discovering at Pompeii more than a heap of ruins, out of which the interest dies quickly because his imagination has not gained materials out of which to reconstruct the living city.

Neapolis, the old Greek city, was similar to Pompeii both in size and construction. Its situation, too, was not dissimilar. It stood near the sea, yet did not touch it, having a clear s.p.a.ce of open ground between its strand and walls, perhaps because the sea was an open gateway into every town which stood upon it, though the nature of the ground partly dictated the arrangement. There is no building, even in the Strada Tribunali, which was standing when Pompeii was a city. The oldest left is near the point at which we entered the street--to be exact, it is at the angle of the Strada Tribunali and the Vico di Francesco del Giudice--a tall brick campanile of graceful outline which, in the confusion of the narrow street, one might most easily pa.s.s un.o.bserved. That is the only portion still remaining of the church built by Bishop Pomponio, between the years 514 and 532; and not only is it almost, if not quite the most ancient building now extant in Naples, but it was the first of Neapolitan churches known to have been dedicated to the Virgin, and it is thus especially sacred in the eyes of the citizens.

Going eastwards still along this most interesting street I come ere long to a great church upon my right where I must pause, for there are a.s.sociated with it closely the memories both of Petrarch and Boccaccio. Now of these two men I confess to a strong preference for the rake. He was a sinner, and a great one. But for that matter he was a penitent in the end, and had he not found grace, it is for no man to scorn him. Iniquitous though they be, I prefer the record of his warm human pa.s.sions to the dry spirituality of Petrarch; and to me one tale out of the _Decameron_, with its high beat of joyous and exultant life, is worth all the sonnets in which the poet of Avignon bewailed the fact that the moon would not come down out of heaven.

No one who has turned over the works of Boccaccio is unacquainted with the name of Fiammetta. She was of course not least among the seven ladies of n.o.ble birth who met in the Church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence on that Tuesday morning when the tales of the _Decameron_ begin. She, too, it was whose amorous musings Boccaccio published in a book which bore her name. In fact her warm-blooded personality pervades the writings of her lover; and it was in this Church of San Lorenzo that he saw her first, as he tells us himself in the _Filocopo_. The pa.s.sage is well known to be autobiographical, though occurring in a tale of pure, or rather impure imagination.

"I found myself," he says, "in a fine church of Naples, named after him who endured to be offered as a sacrifice upon the gridiron. And in it there was a singing compact of sweetest melody. I was listening to the Holy Ma.s.s celebrated by a priest, successor to him who first girt himself humbly with the cord, exalting poverty and adopting it. Now while I stood there, the fourth hour of the day, according to my reckoning, having already pa.s.sed down the Eastern sky, there appeared to my eyes the wondrous beauty of a young woman, come hither to hear what I too heard attentively. I had no sooner seen her than my heart began to throb so strongly that I felt it in my slightest pulses; and not knowing why, nor yet perceiving what had happened, I began to say, 'Oime, what is this?'... But at length, being unable to sate myself with gazing, I said, 'Oh, Love, most n.o.ble lord, whose strength not even the G.o.ds were able to resist, I thank thee for setting happiness before my eyes!'... I had no sooner said these words than the flas.h.i.+ng eyes of the lovely lady fixed themselves on mine with a piercing light."

There was sin in that look, though not perhaps by the standard of those days. It was an Anjou princess who won immortality in the Church of San Lorenzo on that Holy Thursday when she was dreaming of nothing but a lover--perhaps not even of so much as that. She was the Princess Maria, natural daughter of King Robert the Wise, he whose tomb we saw in the Church of Santa Chiara. She had a husband; but no one asks or remembers his name. It is with Boccaccio that her memory is linked for evermore. She was certainly of rare beauty. Her lover, than whom no man ever wrote more delicately, tries to fix it for all time. "Hair so blonde that the world holds nothing like it shadows a white forehead of n.o.ble width, beneath which are the curves of two black and most slender eyebrows ... and under these two wandering and roguish eyes ... cheeks of no other colour than milk." Item two lips, indifferent red! Why, what a s.h.i.+ver it gives one to realise that not Boccaccio himself can convey to us any real picture of his love! Even the magic of his style, informed by all the pa.s.sion of his burning heart, can give us nothing better than a catalogue of charms such as any village lover of to-day might write! The dead are dead; and no wizard can set them before us as they lived.

Yet granting that, it is still the spirits of these lovers which haunt the Church of San Lorenzo, filling the large old temple with a throb of human pa.s.sion to this hour. I saunter round endeavouring to fix my mind on the details of the architecture, which are worth more notice than they commonly receive from all save students. But it is useless.

Every time I raise my eyes I seem to see the subtle radiance of sympathy flash across the church from the eyes of the princess, stirring strange, uneasy feelings, born of young hot blood, and the sensuous essence of the chanting heard in the restless days of spring.

The architecture may wait the coming of some cooler head. I stroll out into the courtyard, full of memories of kings and poets and of Anjou Courts, when the world was splendid, and life was full of colour, and the city not more unhappy than it is to-day.

Among the letters of Petrarch is one written from the monastery attached to this church. The poet lodged there during a visit to Naples in 1342, after the death of King Robert, and gives a vivid description of a great hurricane which struck the city on the 25th of November in that year.

The storm had been predicted by a preacher, whose denunciation struck such terror into the Neapolitans, easily stirred to religious apprehensions, that ere dark a troop of women stripped half naked and clasping their children to their b.r.e.a.s.t.s were rus.h.i.+ng through the streets from church to church, flinging themselves prostrate before the altars, bathing the sacred images with tears, and crying aloud to the Saviour to have mercy on mankind.

The panic spread from house to house. The city was alive with fear.

Petrarch, not untroubled by the general consternation, went early to his chamber, and remained at his window till near midnight watching the moon sail down a ragged angry sky until her light was blotted out by the hills, and all the dome of heaven lay black.

"I was just falling asleep," he says, "when I was rudely awakened by the horrible noise made by the windows of my room. The very wall rocked to its foundation under the buffet of the gust. My lamp, which burns all night, went out; in place of sleep the fear of death came into the chamber. Every soul in the monastery rose, and those who found each other in the turmoil of the night, exhorted one another to meet death bravely.

"The monks who had been astir thus early for chanting Matins, terrified by the trembling of the earth, came to my room brandis.h.i.+ng crosses and relics of the saints. At their head strode a prior named David, a saint indeed, and the sight of them gave us a little courage. We all descended to the church, which we found full of people, and there pa.s.sed the rest of the night, expecting every moment that the city would be swallowed up, as foretold by the preacher.

"It would be impossible to depict the horror of that night in which all the elements seemed to be unchained. Nothing can describe the appalling crash of the storm wind, rain and thunder in one moment, the roar of the furious sea, the swaying of the ground, the shrieks of the people, who thought death here at every instant. Never was night so long. As soon as day came near the altars were made ready, and the priests attired themselves for Ma.s.s. At last the morning came. The upper part of the town had grown more calm, but from the seafront came frightful shrieks. Our fear turned into boldness, and we mounted on horseback, curious to see what was going on.

"G.o.ds! What a scene! s.h.i.+ps had been wrecked in the harbour, and the sh.o.r.e was strewn with still breathing bodies, horribly mangled by being dashed against the rocks--the sea had burst the bounds which G.o.d set for it--all the lower town was under water. It was impossible to enter the streets without risk of drowning. Around us we found more than a thousand Neapolitan gentlemen who had come to a.s.sist, as it were at the obsequies of their country. 'If I die,' I said to myself, 'I shall die in good company.'"

If we may trust the story told by Wading, a great historical authority upon the deeds of the Franciscan Order, to which the monks of San Lorenzo belonged, this same prior David, whose aspect Petrarch found so comforting, was the instrument of a notable miracle on this occasion, having kept the impious sea out of at least some part of the city by boldly thrusting the relics of the saints in its track.

Petrarch does not mention this, and indeed if Prior David could do so much he is to blame for not having done more, since he might as easily have prevented all the damage done while he was chanting in his church.

As for Petrarch, the storm impressed him so deeply that he told Cardinal Colonna he had resolved never to go afloat again, even at the Pope's bidding. "I will leave the air to birds, and the sea to fishes," he observed very sagely; "I know that learned men say there is no more danger on sea than on land, but I prefer to render up my life where I received it. That is a good saying of the ancient writer, 'He who suffers s.h.i.+pwreck a second time has no right to blame Neptune.'"

Are we not growing a little tired of churches? There are so many in this city, and in the next chapter I shall have to dwell long upon the Carmine, or rather on its manifold a.s.sociations. Well, no great harm will be done if we pa.s.s by a good many of these temples; but one must not be left unmentioned, namely the cathedral, which we have almost reached. A few yards from San Lorenzo, the Strada del Duomo cuts across the old Dec.u.ma.n.u.s Major at right angles, and if we descend it a little way towards the sea we have before us the fine front of the cathedral.

It will be expected of me here that in lieu of copying from Gsell-Fels all the interesting facts about the date of the building, describing the ancient fane of Santa Rest.i.tuta which has already witnessed fourteen centuries, or detailing the arrangement of the chapels where so much of the n.o.blest ever born in Naples lies mouldering into dust,--it is expected of me, I suppose, that I shall repeat once more the oft-told tale of the liquefaction of the blood of San Gennaro, that miracle and portent which brings luck to the city if it happens speedily, and is a presage of woe when it is delayed. We have heard the story all our lives. But no book on Naples is complete without it, and I will therefore take the description by Fucini, which has at any rate the advantage of being little known in England, to which I may add that it is the work of one who might very truly say what he did not know of Naples, at least in his own day, was not knowledge.

"In the church," says Fucini, "the crowd was dense. Around the altar crowded pilgrims, male and female, shouting, laughing, weeping, chewing prayers and oranges.... In the midst of deep silence begins the moving function. The officiating priest holding up to the people the vase, not unlike a carriage lamp, inspects it carefully, and beginning to twirl it in his hands, cries out with a stentorian voice, 'It is hard, the blood is hard!' At that fatal announcement the people break out into cries most pitiful. The pilgrims weep, some even are like to faint. The saint is slow. The miracle delays, the cries and tears redouble. A group of peasant women who stand near me pour out these prayers, 'Faccela, faccela, la grazia, San Gennarino mio bello!'