Zacchiele lost his life in the great flood of October, 1857. The dairy
farm where he lived, in the neighbourhood of the Cappuccini Convent,
beyond the Porta-Giulia, was inundated by the flood. The waters
covered the entire country, from the hill of Orlando to the hill of
Castellammare; and, since it had flown over vast deposits of clay, it
looked bloody as in the ancient fable. The tops of the trees emerged
here and there from this blood, so miry and extensive. At intervals
passed enormous trunks of trees with all of their roots, furniture,
unrecognisable materials, groups of beasts not yet dead who bellowed
and disappeared and then reappeared and were lost sight of in the
distance. The droves of oxen, especially, presented a wonderful sight;
their great white bodies pursued one another, their heads reared
desperately from out the water, furious interlacings of horns occurred
in their rushes of terror. As the sea was to the east, the waves at the
mouth of the river overflowed into it. The salt lake of Palata and its
estuaries also joined with the river. The fort became a lost island.
Inland the roads were submerged, and in the house of Donna Cristina the
water-line reached almost half way up the stairs. The tumult increased
continuously, while the bells sounded clamorously. The prisoners,
within their prisons, howled.
Anna, believing in some supreme chastisement from the Most High, took
recourse in prayers for salvation. The second day, as she mounted
to the top of the pigeon-house, she saw nothing but water, water
everywhere under the clouds, and later observed, terrified, horses
galloping madly on the ridge of San Vitale. She descended, dulled, with
her mind in a turmoil, and the persistency of the noise and the mists
of the air blurred in her every sense of place and time.
When the flood began to subside, the country people entered the city by
means of scows. Men, women and children carried in their faces and eyes
a grievous stupefaction. All narrated sad stories. And a ploughman of
the Cappuccini came to the Basile house to announce that Don Zacchiele
had been washed out to sea. The ploughman spoke simply in telling of
the death. He said that in the vicinity of the Cappuccini certain women
had bound their nursing children to the top of an enormous tree to
rescue them from the waters and that the whirlpools had uprooted the
tree, dragging down the five little creatures. Don Zacchiele was upon
a roof with other Christians in a compact group, and as the roof was
about to be submerged the corpses of animals and broken branches beat
against these desperate ones. When at length the tree with the babies
passed over them, the impact was so terrible that after its passage
there was no longer a trace of roof or Christians.
Anna listened without weeping, and in her mind, shaken by the account
of that death, by that tree with its five infants, and those men all
crouched upon the roof while the corpses of beasts beat against it,
sprang up a kind of superstitious wonder like the excitement she had
felt in hearing certain stories of the Old Testament. She mounted
slowly to her room, and tried to compose herself. The sun shone upon
her window, and the turtle slept in a corner, covered with his shield,
while the chattering of swallows came from the tiles. All of these
natural things, this customary tranquillity of her daily life, little
by little comforted her. From the depths of that momentary calm at
length her grief arose clearly, and she bent her head upon her breast
in deep depression.
Her heart was stung with remorse for having preserved against Zacchiele
that strange, silent rancour for so long a time; recollections one
after another came to mind, and the virtues of her lost lover shone
more brightly than ever in her memory. As the scourgings of her grief
increased, she got up, went to her bed, and there stretched herself out
upon her face. Her weeping mingled with the chattering of the birds.
Afterwards, when her tears were dried, the peace of resignation began
to descend upon her soul, and she came to feel that everything of this
earth was frail and that we ought to bend ourselves to the will of God.
The unction of this simple act of consecration spread in her heart a
fulness of sweetness. She felt herself freed from all inquietude, and
found repose in her humble but firm faith. From now on in her law there
was but this one clause: The sovereign will of God, always just, always
adorable, established in all things praised and exalted through all
eternity.