“Messieurs, but the door is between me and the street!”
One of them at that stepped forward, opened it, and gravely bowed me
forth. As gravely I stepped into the rain, and made without hurry for
the beach.
So this was the end to all my exaltation, to my dreams of love and
sacrifice! I stamped in the puddles. “_Vive la tyrannie! vive les
Bourbons!_” I cried to myself as I sped on. So shamed, so wronged, so
spurned! was not the worst justified to me? I saw the shadow of my
loved monster standing solemn sentinel over the single trunk we had
brought with us. Our heavy baggage we had left in Rome. O, _mon
fidèle_! how at that moment I could have stormed my wounded heart out
on thy breast!
“Canst thou lift it and follow me?” I said only.
He answered, the dear Caliban, by obeying.
“Whither?” he growled.
I looked desperately about me. Near at hand it was all a tangle of
spars and sheds, and the rain driving between. But inland, the night
went up in glistening terraces, scattered constellations all shaken in
the thunder of a great city. Far south, what looked like the red light
of a forge alternately glared, and faded, and grew again, battling, it
seemed, with drowning flaws of tempest. It was the glimmering bonfires
of Vesuvius, those hot ashes of a consumed empire, from which,
according to Pissani, the phœnix Liberty was to arise. I laughed:
“Not yet, my poet, my friend; since thou choosest another than Pucelle
to breed thee thy patriots!”
I turned to the north. There, upon a huddle of tall buildings, looming
near and enormous in the dark, the stars of the hills seemed to have
drifted down, clinging thickly over all, like primroses under a bank.
“It is the royal palace,” said Gogo.
“It is _our_ way, then,” I panted, on fire. “Follow me, and quickly;
we are not safe here.”
Along wharfs and causeways, plashing over the filthy stones, by
squalid alley and reeking wall, I fled and he pursued. I had no
lodestar save my hate; but it served. The growing scream and thunder
of the town drove towards us as we advanced; but few people in that
bitter night; until, skirting the massed buildings of the arsenal and
palace, we emerged suddenly through a little lane into the Strada di
St. Lucia, and paused a moment undecided and amazed.
It was as if the devil had taken his glowing pencil and ruled off this
quarter of the city for his own. A noisome ravine of houses it was,
with life like a fiery torrent brawling along its bed. Song and tumult
and mad licence; fingers quick to stab, or to snap like castanets to a
dancing child; doorways that were the mouths of tributary sewers
vomiting filth and tatters into the main; fishermen, at their flaring
stalls, bawling crabs and oysters, _frutti di mare_--my God! what
fruit, and from what a sea that drained a shambles; women out in the
rain and the open, making their shameless toilettes, and screaming the
while such damnation by the calendar on their sister doxies for a
word, a retort, a mere flea-bite (the commonest experience, after all)
as to leave themselves, one would have thought, no vocabulary for the
more strenuous encounters of fists and claws; children swarming
everywhere in the double sense, and scattering shrill oaths like
vermin; rags and nakedness and insolence--a loafing melodrama--an
epitome of the worst squalor and viciousness in all Naples--such was
the district upon which we had alighted, the mid-ward of the
Lazzaroni.
As we stood, a ruffian, swaggering past, swerved, and approached a
handsome, impudent face. Gogo, without a word, heaved his shoulder
between. But I had no fear. These Lazzari were the king’s friends--and
mine. I pushed aside my henchman.
“_Pour le roi!_” I cried, and pointed towards the palace.
He understood, and whipped off his greasy hat.
“_Viva il re!_” he answered enthusiastically, showing his white teeth,
and motioned us to a street going eastwards up the hill. I saw and
recognised the same fellow once or twice afterwards. He was a Michele
di Laudo--Mad Michael, they called him--who, as chief of his
vagabonds, was to take a prominent part in the defence of the suburbs
against the French.
We crossed the street under his protection, and on its farther side,
before waving us on, he bent and snatched a kiss. The rank sweet touch
of his lips was like a _visé_ on my passport into hell. It seemed to
bring the blaze, the colour, the stench of the reeling streets
clashing to a focus in my brain, and it sent me speeding on half drunk
and half sick, loathing and hugging myself. I was an angel in Sodom,
running blindly for the refuge of God’s wing in a dazzle of roaring
lights, and confused by the glare, knowing not whether I turned to the
self I had left or to the self that was awaiting me. Gogo, straining
in my wake, panted as I hurried before him--
“For every dog but the watch-dog, a bone.”