THE DOWNFALL OF THRONES
1848-1849
Garibaldi Arrives--Venice under Manin--The Dissolution of the Temporal
Power--Republics at Rome and Florence.
While the remnant of the Piedmontese army recrossed the bridge over
the Ticino at Pavia, crushed, though not though want of valour,
outraged in the person of its King, surely the saddest vanquished host
that ever retraced in sorrow the path it had traced in the wildest
joy, a few thousand volunteers in Lombardy still refused to lay down
their arms or to recognise that, after the capitulation of Milan, all
was lost. Valueless as a fact, their defiance of Austria had value as
a prophecy, and its prophetic aspect comes more clearly into view when
it is seen that the leader of the little band was Garibaldi, while its
standard-bearer was Mazzini. These two had lately met for the first
time since 1833, when Garibaldi, or 'Borel,' as he was called in the
ranks of 'Young Italy,' went to Marseilles to make the acquaintance of
the head and brain of the society which he had joined, as has been
mentioned, on the banks of the Black Sea.
'When I was young and had only aspirations,' said Garibaldi in London
in April 1864, 'I sought out a man who could give me counsel and guide
my youthful years; I sought him as the thirsty man seeks water. This
man I found; he alone kept alive the sacred fire, he alone watched
while all the world slept; he has always remained my friend, full of
love for his country, full of devotion for the cause of freedom: this
man is Joseph Mazzini.'
The words spoken then--when the younger patriot was the chosen hero of
the greatest of free nations, while the elder, still misunderstood by
almost all, was shunned and calumniated, and even called 'the worst
enemy of Italy'--gave one fresh proof, had one been wanting, that,
though there have been more flawless characters than Garibaldi, never
in a human breast beat a more generous heart. Politically, there was
nearly as much divergence between Mazzini and Garibaldi as between
Mazzini and Cavour; the master thought the pupil lacked ideality, the
pupil thought the master lacked practicalness; but they were at one in
the love of their land and in the desire to serve her.
On parting with Mazzini in 1833, Garibaldi, then captain of a sailing
vessel, went to Genoa and enrolled himself as a common sailor in the
Royal Piedmontese Navy. The step, strange in appearance, was certainly
taken on Mazzini's advice, and the immediate purpose was doubtless to
make converts for 'Young Italy' among the marines. Had Garibaldi been
caught when the ruthless persecution of all connected with 'Young
Italy' set in, he would have been shot offhand, as were all those who
were found dabbling with politics in the army and navy. He escaped
just in time, and sailed for South America.
The _Gazzetta Piemontese_ of the 17th of June 1834 published the
sentence of death passed upon him, with the rider which declared him
exposed to public vengeance 'as an enemy of the State, and liable to
all the penalties of a brigand of the first category.' He saw the
paper; and it was the first time that he or anyone else had seen the
name of Giuseppe Garibaldi in print; a name of which Victor Emmanuel
would one day say that 'it filled the furthest ends of the earth.'
Profitable to Italy, over nearly every page of whose recent history
might be written 'out of evil cometh forth good,' was the banishment
which threw Garibaldi into his romantic career of the next twelve
years between the Amazon and the Plata. Soldier of fortune who did not
seek to enrich himself; soldier of freedom who never aimed at power,
he always meant to turn to account for his own country the experience
gained in the art of war in that distant land, where he rapidly became
the centre of a legend, almost the origin of a myth. Antique in
simplicity, singleness, superabundance of life, and in a sort of
naturalism which is not of to-day; unselfconscious, trustful in
others, forgiving, incapable of fear, abounding in compassion,
Garibaldi's true place is not in the aggregation of facts which we
call history, but in the apotheosis of character which we call the
_Iliad_, the _Mahabharata_, the _Edda_, the cycles of Arthur and of
Roland, and the _Romancero del Cid_.
In childhood he rescued a drowning washerwoman; in youth he nursed men
dying of cholera; as a veteran soldier he passed the night among the
rocks of Caprera hunting for a lamb that was lost. No amount of habit
could remove the repugnance he felt at uttering the word 'fire.' Yet
this gentle warrior, when his career was closed and he lay chained to
his bed of pain, endorsed his memoirs with the Spanish motto: 'La
guerra es la verdadera vida del hombre.' War was the veritable life of
Garibaldi; war, not conspiracy; war, not politics; war, not, alas!
model farming, for which the old chief fancied in his later years that
he had discovered in himself a vocation.
Riding the wild horses and chasing the wild cattle of the Pampas, his
eyes covering the immense spaces untrodden by man, this corsair of
five-and-twenty drank deep of the innocent pleasures of untamed
nature, when not occupied in fighting by land or sea, with equal
fortune; or rather, perhaps, with greater fortune and greater proof of
inborn genius as commander of the naval campaign of the Paran[=a] than
as defender of Monte Video. No adventures were wanting to him; he was
even imprisoned and tortured. In South America he found the one woman
worthy to bear his name, the lion-hearted Anita, whom he carried off,
she consenting, from her father and the man to whom her father had
betrothed her. Garibaldi in after years expressed such deep contrition
for the act which bore Anita away from the quiet life in store for
her, and plunged her into hardships which only ended when she died,
that, misinterpreting his remorse, many supposed the man from whom he
took her to have been already her husband. It was not so. Shortly
before the Church of San Francisco at Monte Video was burnt down (some
twenty years ago), the marriage register of Garibaldi and Anita was
found in its archives, and a legal copy was made. In it she is
described as 'Doña Ana Maria de Jesus, unmarried daughter of Don
Benito Rivevio de Silva, of Laguna, in Brazil.' The bridegroom, who
during all his American career had scarcely clothes to cover him,
parted with his only possession, an old silver watch, to pay the
priest's fees. Head of the Italian Legion, he only took the rations of
a common soldier, and as candles were not included in the rations, he
sat in the dark. Someone reported this to the Government, who sent him
a present of £20, half of which he gave to a poor widow.
When the first rumours that something was preparing in Italy reached
Monte Video, Garibaldi wrote a letter offering his services to the
Pope, still hailed as Champion of Freedom, and soon embarked himself
for the Old World, with eighty-five of his best soldiers, among whom
was his beloved friend, Francesco Anzani. Giacomo Medici had been
despatched a little in advance to confer with Mazzini. At starting,
the Legion knew nothing of the revolution in Milan and Venice, or of
Charles Albert having taken the field. Great was their wonder,
therefore, on reaching Gibraltar, to see hoisted on a Sardinian ship a
perfectly new flag, never beheld by them out of dreams--the Italian
tricolor.
So Garibaldi returned at forty-one years of age to the country where
the sentence of death passed upon him had never been revoked. Before
the law he was still 'a brigand of the first category.' Nor was he
quite sure that he would not be arrested, and, as a precaution, when
he cast anchor in the harbour of his native Nice, he ran up the Monte
Videan colours. It was needless. Throngs of people crowded the quays
to welcome home the Ligurian captain, who had done great things over
sea. Anita was there; she had preceded him to Europe with their three
children, Teresita, Menotti and Ricciotti. There, also, was his old
mother, who never ceased to be beautiful, the 'Signora Rosa,' as the
Nizzards called her. She was almost a woman of the people, but the
simple dignity of her life made all treat her as a superior being. To
her prayers, while she lived, Garibaldi believed that he owed his
safety in so many perils, and after her death the soldiers used to say
that on the eve of battles he walked apart communing with her spirit.
From Nice, Garibaldi went to Genoa, where he took a last leave of his
friend Anzani, who returned from exile not to fight, as he had hoped,
but to die. The day before he expired, Medici arrived at Genoa; he was
very angry with the Chief, in consequence of some disagreement as to
the place of landing. Anzani said to him entreatingly: 'Do not be
hard, Medici, on Garibaldi; he is a predestined man: a great part of
the future of Italy is in his hands.' The counsel from dying lips sank
deep into Medici's heart; he often disagreed with Garibaldi, but to
his last day he never quarrelled with him again. Long years after, if
friction arose between Garibaldi and his King, it was Medici's part to
throw oil on the waters.
Garibaldi sought an interview with Charles Albert, and offered him his
arms and the arms of his Legion, 'not unused to war.' Pope or prince,
little it mattered to him who the saviour of Italy should be. But
Charles Albert, though he was polite, merely referred his visitor to
his ministers, and the inestimable sword of the hero went begging for
a month or more, till the Provisional Government of Milan gave him the
command of the few thousand volunteers with whom we saw him at the
conclusion of the campaign. The war was over before he had a chance of
striking a blow. His indignant cry of defiance could not be long
sustained, for Garibaldi never drove men to certain and useless
slaughter; when the real position of things became known to him, he
led his band over the Swiss confines, and bid them wait for a better
and not distant day.
Under Manin's wise rule, which was directed solely to the preservation
of peace within the city, and resistance to the enemy at its gates,
Venice remained undaunted by the catastrophes in Lombardy, after all
the Venetian _terra firma_ had been restored to Austria. (Even the
heroic little mountain fort of Osopo in the Friuli was compelled to
capitulate on the 12th of October.) The blockade of the city on the
lagunes did not prevent Venice from acting not only on the defensive
but on the offensive; in the sortie of the 27th of October, 2500
Venetians drove the Austrians from Mestre with severe losses, carrying
back six captured guns, which the people dragged in triumph to the
Doge's palace. A cabin-boy named Zorzi was borne on the shoulders of
the soldiers enveloped in the Italian flag; his story was this: the
national colours, floating from the mast of the pinnace on which he
served, were detached by a ball and dropped into the water; the child
sprang in after them, and with a shout of _Viva l'Italia,_ fixed them
again at the masthead under a sharp fire. Zorzi was, of course, the
small hero of the hour, especially among the women. General Pepe
commanded the sortie, with Ulloa, Fontana and Cosenz as his
lieutenants; Ugo Bassi, the patriot monk of Bologna, marched at the
head of a battalion with the crucifix, the only arms he ever carried,
in his hand. The success cost Italy dear, as Alessandro Poerio, poet
and patriot, the brother of Baron Carlo Poerio of Naples, lost his
life by a wound received at Mestre. But the confidence of Venice in
her little army was increased a hundredfold.
The most important event of the autumn of 1848 was the gradual but
continuous break-up of the Papal authority in Rome. The meeting of the
new Parliament only served to accentuate the want of harmony between
the Pope and his ministers; assassinations were frequent; what law
there was was administered by the political clubs. In Count Terenzio
Mamiani, Pius IX. found a Prime Minister who, for eloquence and
patriotism, could hardly be rivalled, but hampered as he was by the
opposition he encountered from the Sovereign, and by the absence of
any real or solid moderate constitutional party in the Chamber of
Deputies, Mamiani could carry out very few of the improvements he
desired to effect, and in August he retired from an impracticable
task, to be replaced by men of less note and talent than himself.
Wishing to create fresh complications for the Pope, the Austrians
invaded the Legations, regardless of his protests, and after the fall
of Milan, General Welden advanced on Bologna, where, however, his
forces were so furiously attacked by the inhabitants and the few
carabineers who were all the troops in the town, that they were
dislodged from the strong position they had taken up on the
Montagnola, the hill which forms the public park, and obliged to fly
beyond the city walls. Radetsky disapproved of Welden's movements on
Bologna, and ordered him not to return to the assault.
Had the Austrians returned and massacred half the population of
Bologna, the Pope might have been saved. When Rome heard that the
stormy capital of Romagna was up in arms, once more, for a moment,
there were united counsels. 'His Holiness,' ran the official
proclamation, 'was firmly resolved to repel the Austrian invasion with
all the means which his State and the well-regulated enthusiasm of his
people could supply.' The Chamber confirmed the ministerial proposal
to demand French help against Austria. But all this brave show of
energy vanished with the pressing danger, and Bologna, which, by its
manly courage, had galvanised the whole bloodless body-politic, now
hastened the hour of dissolution by lapsing into a state of deplorable
anarchy, the populace using the arms with which they had driven out
the Austrians, to establish a reign of murder and pillage. L.C. Farini
restored something like order, but the general weakness of the power
of government became every day more apparent.
The Pope made a last endeavour to avert the catastrophe by calling to
his counsels Count Pellegrino Rossi, a man of unyielding will, who was
as much opposed to demagogic as to theocratic government. Rossi,
having been compromised when very young in Murat's enterprises, lived
long abroad, and attained the highest offices under Louis Philippe,
who sent him to Rome to arrange with the Pope the delicate question of
the expulsion of the Jesuits from France, which he conducted to an
amicable settlement, though one not pleasing to the great Society.
Not being one of those who change masters as they change their boots
according to the state of the roads, the ambassador retired from the
French service when Louis Philippe was dethroned. As minister to the
Pope, he made his influence instantly felt; measures were taken to
restore order in the finances, discipline in the army, public security
in the streets, and method and activity in the Government offices. The
tax on ecclesiastical property was enforced; fomenters of anarchy,
even though they wore the garb of patriots, and perhaps honestly
believed themselves to be such, were vigorously dealt with. If anyone
could have given the Temporal Power a new lease of life, it would have
been a man so gifted and so devoted as Pellegrino Rossi, but the
entire forces, both of subversion and of reaction, were against him,
and most of all was against him the fatality of dates. Not at human
bidding do the dead arise and walk. The most deeply to be regretted
event that happened in the course of the Italian revolution gave his
inevitable failure the appearance of a fortuitous accident.
Parliament, which had been prorogued on the 26th of August, was to
open on the 15th of November. Anarchy, black and red, was in the air.
Though disorders were expected, Rossi made no provision for keeping
the space clear round the palace where Parliament met; knots of men,
with sinister faces, gathered in all parts of the square. Rossi was
warned in the morning that an attempt would be made to assassinate
him; he was entreated not to go to the Chamber, to which he replied
that it was his duty to be present, and that if people wanted his
blood they would have it sooner or later, whether he took precautions
or not. Two policemen to keep the passage free when he reached the
Chamber would, nevertheless, have saved his life. As he walked from
his carriage to the stairs, an unknown individual pushed against him
on the right side, and when he turned to see who it was, the assassin
plunged a dagger in his throat. He fell, bathed in blood, to expire
without uttering a word.
In the Chamber, the deputies proceeded to business; not one raised an
indignant protest against a crime which violated the independence of
the representatives of the nation. The mere understanding of what
liberty means is absolutely wanting in most populations when they
first emerge from servitude.
After the craven conduct of the deputies, it is no wonder if the dregs
of the people went further, and paraded the streets singing songs in
praise of the assassin. The Pope summoned the Presidents of the two
Chambers and Marco Minghetti, whom he requested to form a new
ministry. But the time for regular proceeding was past; the city was
in the hands of the mob, which imposed on the Pope the acceptance of a
ministry of nonentities nominated by it. The Swiss Guard fired on the
crowd which attempted to gain access to the Quirinal; the crowd,
reinforced by the Civic Guard, returned to the attack and fired
against the walls, a stray shot killing Monsignor Palma, who was in
one of the rooms. The Pope decided on flight. He left Rome in disguise
during the evening of the 25th of November. After gaining the
Neapolitan frontier, he took the road to Gaeta. The illusion of the
Pope Liberator ended with the Encyclical; the illusion of the
Constitutional Pope ended with the flight to Gaeta. Pius IX. was only
in a limited degree responsible for his want of success, because the
task he had set before him was the quadrature of the circle in
politics.
The weight of a less qualified responsibility rests upon him for his
subsequent actions. On the 3rd of December Parliament voted a proposal
to send a deputation to the Pope, praying him to return to his States.
To give the deputation greater authority, the Municipality of Rome
proposed that the Syndic, the octogenarian Prince Corsini, should
accompany it. It also comprised two ecclesiastics, and thus
constituted, it left Rome for Gaeta on the 5th of December. On the
borders of the Neapolitan kingdom its passage was barred by the
police, and it was obliged to retrace its steps to Terracina. Here the
deputation drew up a letter to Cardinal Antonelli (no longer the
patriotic minister of the spring), in which an audience with the
Sovereign Pontiff was respectfully requested. The answer came that the
Pope would not receive the deputation. It was an answer that he was at
liberty to make, but it should have meant abdication. If, called back
by the will of the Parliament of his own making, the Sovereign deigned
not even to receive the bearers of the invitation, in what way did he
contemplate resuming the throne? It was only too easy to guess. The
Head of Christendom had become a convert of King Ferdinand of Naples,
otherwise Bomba. By a path strewn with the sinister flowers of war did
Pius IX. meditate returning to his subjects--by that path and no
other.
The Galetti-Sterbini ministry, appointed by the Pope under popular
pressure a few days before his departure, remained in charge of
affairs, somewhat strengthened by the adhesion of Terenzio Mamiani as
Minister of Foreign Affairs. Mamiani at first declined to form part of
the ministry, but joined it afterwards with self-sacrificing
patriotism, in the hope of saving things from going to complete rack
and ruin during the interregnum caused by the withdrawal of the Head
of the State. He only retired from the ungrateful office when he saw
the imminence of a radical change in the form of government, which was
not desired by him any more than it had been by Rossi.
The mass of the population of the Roman States had desired such a
change ever since the days of Gregory; the temporary enthusiasm for
Pius, if it arrested the flow of the stream, did not prevent the
waters from accumulating beyond the dyke. One day the dyke would
burst, and the waters sweep all before them.
A Constituent Assembly was convoked for the 5th of February 1849. The
elections, which took place on the 21st of January, were on this
basis: every citizen of more than twenty-one years was allowed to
vote; every citizen over twenty-five could become a deputy; the number
of deputies was fixed at two hundred; a candidate who received less
than 500 votes would not be elected. On the 9th of February, the
Constituent Assembly voted the downfall of the Temporal Power (free
exercise of his spiritual functions being, at the same time, assured
to the Supreme Pontiff), and the establishment of a republican form of
government. The Roman Republic was proclaimed from the Capitol.
Ten votes were given against the republic. No government ever came
into existence in a more strictly legal manner. Had it not represented
the true will of the people, the last Roman Commonwealth could not
have left behind so glorious, albeit brief, a record.
A youthful poet, descendant of the Doges of Genoa, Goffredo Mameli,
whose 'Fratelli d'Italia' was the battle-hymn to which Italy marched,
wrote these three words to Mazzini: 'Roma, Repubblica, Venite.' So
Mazzini came to Rome, which confided her destinies to him, as she had
once confided them to the Brescian Arnold and to Cola di Rienzi. Not
Arnold--not Rienzi in his nobler days--dreamed a more sublime dream of
Roman liberty than did Giuseppe Mazzini, or more nearly wrote down
that dream in facts.
Originally the executive power was delegated to a committee, but this
was changed to a Triumvirate, the Triumvirs being Armellini, Saffi and
Mazzini. Mazzini's mind and will directed the whole.
On the 18th of February, Cardinal Antonelli demanded in the Pope's
name the armed intervention of France, Austria, Spain and Naples, 'as
in this way alone can order be restored in the States of the Church,
and the Holy Father re-established in the exercise of his supreme
authority, in compliance with the imperious exigencies of his august
and sacred character, the interests of the universal Church, and the
peace of nations. In this way he will be enabled to retain the
patrimony which he received at his accession, and transmit it in its
integrity to his successors.'
The Pope, who could not bring himself to stain his white robes with
the blood of the enemies of Italy, called in four armies to shoot down
his subjects, because in no other way could he recover his lost
throne.
Pius IX. was the twenty-sixth Pontiff who called the foreigner into
Italy.
The final conquest of the Pope by the party of universal reaction
could only be effected by his isolation from all but one set of
influences; this is precisely what happened at Gaeta. There are
reasons for thinking that his choice of the hospitality of the King of
the Two Sicilies, rather than that of France or Spain or Sardinia, was
the result of an intrigue in which Count Spaur, the Bavarian minister
who represented the interests of Austria in Rome after that power
withdrew her ambassador, played a principal part. Even after Pius
arrived at Gaeta, it is said that he talked of it as the first stage
of a longer journey. He had never shown any liking for the Neapolitan
Bourbons, and the willingness which he expressed to Gioberti to crown
Charles Albert King of Italy if his arms were successful, was probably
duly appreciated by Ferdinand II. To save the Pope from absorption by
the retrograde party, and to avoid the certainty of a foreign
invasion, Gioberti, who became Prime Minister of Piedmont in November
1848, was anxious to occupy the Roman states with Sardinian troops
immediately after the Pope's flight, when his subjects still
recognised his sovereignty. Gioberti resigned because this policy was
opposed by Rattazzi and other of his colleagues in the ministry. It
would have been a difficult _rôle_ to play; Sardinia, while
endeavouring to checkmate the reaction, might have become its
instrument. The failure of Gioberti's plan cannot be regretted, but
his forecast of what would happen if it were not attempted proved to
be correct.
Soon after the arrival of his exalted guest, King Ferdinand with his
family, a great number of priests, and a strong escort, moved his
residence from the capital to Gaeta. The modified Constitution,
substituted for the first charter after the events of the 15th of May,
was still nominally in force; Parliament had met during the summer,
but the King solved the riddle of governing through his ministers, on
purely retrograde principles, without paying more heed to the
representatives of the nations than to the benches on which they sat.
Prorogued on the 5th of September, Parliament was to have met on the
30th of November, but when that date approached, it was prorogued
again to the 1st of February. 'Our misery has reached such a climax,'
wrote Baron Carlo Poerio, 'that it is enough to drive us mad. Every
faculty of the soul revolts against the ferocious reactionary
movement, the more disgraceful from its execrable hypocrisy. We are
governed by an oligarchy; the only article maintained is that
respecting the taxes. The laws have ceased to exist; the Statute is
buried; a licentious soldiery rules over everything, and the press is
constantly employed to asperse honest men. The lives of the deputies
are menaced. Another night of St Bartholomew is threatened to all who
will not sell body and soul.' Ferdinand only waited till he had
recovered substantial hold over Sicily to do away with even the
fiction of parliamentary government. Messina had fallen in September,
though not till half the city was in flames, the barbarous cruelties
practised on the inhabitants after the surrender exciting the
indignation of the English and French admirals who witnessed the
bombardment. This was the first step to the subjection of Sicily, but
not till after Syracuse and Catania fell did the King feel that there
was no further cause for anxiety--the taking of the capital becoming a
mere question of time. He was so much pleased at the fall of Catania
that he had a mock representation of the siege performed at Gaeta in
presence of the Pope and of half the sacred college.
On the 13th of March Prince Torelli handed the President of the
Neapolitan Chamber of Deputies a sealed packet which contained a royal
decree dissolving Parliament. Naples was once more under an
irresponsible despotism. The lazzaroni of both the lower and higher
classes, if by lazzaroni may be understood the born allies of
ignorance, idleness and bigotry, rejoiced and were glad. Nor were they
few. Unlike the Austrians in the north, Ferdinand had his party; the
'fidelity of his subjects' of which he boasted, was not purely
mythical. Whether, considering its basis, it was much to boast of,
need not be discussed.
In March, the happy family at Gaeta was increased by a new arrival.
Had he been better advised, Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, would have
never gone to breathe that malarious atmosphere. He had played no
conjuror's tricks with his promises to his people; Austrian though he
was, he had really acted the part of an Italian prince, and there was
nothing to show that he had not acted it sincerely. But a persistent
bad luck attended his efforts. Though the ministers appointed by him
included men as distinguished as the Marquis Gino Capponi, Baron
Ricasoli and Prince Corsini, they failed in winning a strong popular
support. Leghorn, where the population, unlike that of the rest of
Tuscany, is by nature turbulent, broke into open revolution. In the
last crisis, the Grand Duke entrusted the government to the extreme
Liberals, Montanelli the professor, and Guerrazzi the novelist; both
were honourable men, and Guerrazzi was thought by many to be a man of
genius. The vigorous rhetoric of his _Assedio di Firenze_ had warmed
the patriotism of many young hearts. But, as statesmen, the only
talent they showed was for upsetting any _régime_ with which they were
connected.
The Grand Duke was asked to convoke a Constituent Assembly, following
the example of Rome. If every part of Italy were to do the same, the
constitution and form of government of the whole country could be
settled by a convention of the various assemblies. The idea was worthy
of respect because it pointed to unity; but in view of the existing
situation, Tuscany's solitary adhesion would hardly have helped the
nation, while it was accompanied by serious risks to the state. The
Grand Duke seemed about to yield to the proposal, but, on receiving a
strong protest from the Pope, he refused to do so on the ground that
it would expose himself and his subjects to the terrors of
ecclesiastical censure. He still remained in Tuscany, near Viareggio,
till he was informed that a band of Leghornese had set out with the
intention of capturing his person. Then he left for Gaeta on board the
English ship _Bull Dog._ The republic had been already proclaimed at
Florence, with Montanelli and Guerrazzi as its chief administrators.
It succeeded in pleasing no one. Civil war was more than once at the
threshhold of Florence, for the peasants rose in armed resistance to
the new government. In less than two months the restoration of the
Grand. Ducal authority was accomplished almost of itself.
Unfortunately, the Grand Duke who was to come back was not the same
man as he who went away. The air of Gaeta did its work.