THE BEAUTIES AND TRADITIONS OF THE POSILIPO
WITH SOME OBSERVATIONS UPON VIRGIL THE ENCHANTER
It was setting towards evening when I turned my back on Baiae and drove
through Pozzuoli along the dusty road which runs beside the sea in the
direction of Posilipo. All day I had seen the blunt headland of tufa
lying like a cloud on the further side of the blue bay; and from hour
to hour as I plodded through the blasted country, my thoughts turned
pleasantly to the great rampart which stood solid when all the region
further west was shaken like a cornfield by the wind, and beyond which
lies the city, with its endless human tragedies and its fatal beauty
unimpaired by the possession of many masters. "Bocca baciata non perde
ventura...," the scandalous old proverb has a sweet application to the
city, and the mouth which has been kissed by conquerors and tyrants is
still as fresh and rosy as when first uplifted for the delight of man.
I think this angle of the bay more beautiful than Baiae or Misenum. In
Roman times the opposite shore may have excelled it; but one does not
know the precise form of the ancient coastline. As I advanced towards
the headland, leaving behind the bathing-place of Bagnoli, and passing
out on the wide green flats which at that point occupy the valley
mouth, the lofty crag of Nisida began to detach itself from the
mainland, and a channel of blue sea shining between the two glowed
sweetly in the increasing warmth of evening light. The island is a
crater, a finely broken mass of volcanic rock and verdure, flecked
here with light and there with shadow. One side of the crater lacks
half of its rim, so that there is a little port. Down by the edge of
the many-coloured water is a pier, where half a dozen boats lie
rocking; and from a similar landing-place upon the shingly beach of
the mainland a fisherman is hailing some comrade on the island. The
answering shout floats back faint and distant through the clear air,
and a boat pushes off, sculled slowly by a man standing erect and
facing towards the bow, in the ancient fashion of the Mediterranean.
At this point I dismiss my carriage, for I have many things to think
about, and do not want the company of the chattering, extortionate
vetturino. Having seen him go off up the hill, cracking his whip like
pistol shots, and urging on his eager pony in the full hope of a fare
at the Punta di Posilipo, I stroll on up the long ascent towards the
shoulder of the hill, stopping often to watch the gold light grow
warmer on the sea, tinging the volcanic crags of Ischia, until my
enjoyment of the view is broken by an uninvited companion, who thrusts
himself upon me with a reminder that I have reached the opening of the
Grotto of Sejanus.
I had forgotten all about the grotto, though indeed it was the point
for which I should have made, and but for the interruption of the
lively little Tuscan who acts as custodian, I might have walked by
without going in. I accepted gratefully the voluble assurances that
this is indeed the most wonderful and authentic grotto on the
Posilipo, far surpassing those twin tunnels through which one goes
from Naples to Pozzuoli; and the guide, having caught up a torch of
smouldering tow, and vented a few hearty curses on the Neapolitans,
who lie, he says, without recollection of eternity, conducted me into
a long passage of utter and palpable darkness.
"Ne femmena ne tela a lume di cannela," say the Neapolitans--You must
not judge either a woman or a weft by candlelight. This is very true,
and many a man has suffered from forgetting it. But when it is a case
of grottoes, there is no choice; and accordingly I delivered myself
over to the chatter of the Tuscan.
The lively little man was extolling the superior character of his own
countrymen of Tuscany; and when his torch flickered out with no
warning, leaving us in sudden blackness in the bowels of the earth,
his indignation blazed out fiercely against the worthless knaves who
sold such tow in Naples. I paid little heed to him, for the grandeur
and the silence of the place appeal to the imagination. I was treading
on a smooth and even floor, between walls of tufa which had been
chiselled out so straight that whenever I looked back the entrance
shone behind me like a star across a vast dark sky. The air was sweet
and fresh, filtering through some hidden openings of the rock. The
relighted torch flashed now on Roman brickwork, now on arches of
massive stone built to increase the strength of the vault, and fit it
the better for those great processions of chariots and horsemen which
came and went to the villa at the further end, returning from a
hunting party with dogs which had wearied out the game on the hills of
Astroni, or escorting the gladiators landed at Pozzuoli for some
combat in the theatre which now lies so waste and desolate amid the
vineyards. How this passage must have rung with shouts and laughter in
old Roman days! But now it is as silent as the tomb; and one passes on
a full half-mile in darkness, to emerge at length with heated fancy
and high memories of Roman splendour, on nothing but a ruinous
cottage, a starved vineyard, and a paltry garden-ground of common
vegetables!
It is not possible, one thinks impatiently, that this trumpery of
vines and cabbages can be all there is to see at the further end of a
passage so ancient and hewn with such vast labour through the solid
rock; and indeed, when one's eyes are used to the sunshine, one
perceives that the garden plot lies like a dust heap on the ruins of a
splendid palace. Treading across a patch of vegetables, covering I
know not what remains of marble portico or colonnade, I peered down
through the trails of budding vines into a hollow where some fragments
of old masonry project still from the earth, and after much gazing
perceived that the sides of the hollow rise in tiers, one bank above
another, to the height of seventeen rows. So that here, on this now
lonely creek of the Posilipo, in face of Nisida and all the blue reach
of the Bay of Baiae, there was once a theatre, ringing with shouts and
applause, and by it all the other buildings of a noble mansion. It is
a poor ruin now, stripped of the marbles which once made it splendid.
There are vast structures on the slopes and in the sea itself: an
Odeon, another building seated like a theatre, and relics innumerable
of one of the greatest of all Roman villas, which must have been
incomparably lovely. If only one such might have lasted to our day!
The long darkness of the grotto, the exit on the hillside, where the
ancient splendour is so shattered, combine to create a sense of
mystery which one never loses on the Posilipo. The sea frets and
chafes about the jagged reefs at the base of the headland, echoing and
resounding in caves of vast antiquity, where broken marbles and
defaced inscriptions give substance to the tales of treasure which the
fishers say lies hidden in them to this hour. The dullest of mankind
would be smitten with some touch of fancy on this spot, much more the
quick-witted Neapolitans, whose rich imagination has run riot among
the relics of a splendid past.
The impression of this lonely cliff is characteristic of all the
headland. I send away my guide, who can do nothing more for me, and
perch myself upon a scrap of ancient wall, whence I can look past the
green island of Nisida, full in the warm light of the westering sun,
over the wide bay to where the black peak of Ischia, towering into the
clear sky, begins to shine as if some goddess had brushed it with
liquid gold.
There is a cavern in the cliff at no great distance which the
fishermen call "La Grotta dei Tuoni" (The Cave of Thunders); I
scarcely know why, unless it be because the sea bellows so loudly when
it is driven by the storm wind round the vaults and hollows of the
rock. The cave is accessible only by boat; and, like many another
cleft in the soft tufa of this headland, it is believed to hide
immeasurable riches, left there since the days when every cliff bore
its white Roman villa, and all the shady caverns were the cool arbours
of their pleasure grounds. From the creek of Marechiano, which cleaves
the Posilipo in half, up to the very spot on which I sit, there is no
break in the succession of the ruins. Ancient cisterns lie upon the
beaches, the green tide washes over shattered colonnades, the boatmen
peering down through the translucent water as they sink their nets
see the light waver round the foundations of old palaces, and the
seaweeds stir fantastically on the walls. It is little wonder if no
one of them can rid himself of the belief in spirits wandering yet
about the wreck of so much splendour, or shake off the fear
"Lest the dead should, from their sleep
Bursting o'er the starlit deep,
Lead a rapid masque of death
O'er the waters of his path."
As for this cave of the thunders, the story goes that one day certain
Englishmen presented themselves before a boatman who was lounging on
the quay of Santa Lucia at Naples and demanded whether he would take
them on his skiff into the grotto.
Pepino had seen the cavern many times, and did not fear it. "Why not?"
he said, and the bargain was struck. As they rowed across the crescent
bay of the Chiaia, past the Palazzo di Donna Anna, and under the
hillside where the whispering pines grow down the high cliff faces,
and golden lemons glow in the shade of marble terraces, the Englishmen
were very silent; and Pepino, who loved chatter, began to feel
oppressed. He did not quite like the zeal with which they sat studying
a huge volume; for he knew that great books were of more use to
magicians than to honest people, who were quite content with little
ones, or better still with none at all. So he looked askance at the
English students as he guided his boat to the mouth of the grotto of
the thunders, and ran in out of the sunshine to the cool green shades
and wavering lights among which the old treasure of the Romans lies
concealed.
[Illustration: FISHING STAGE, SANTA LUCIA, NAPLES.]
The Englishmen rose up, and one of them, taking the book in both
hands, began to read aloud. Who can tell what were the words? They
were strange and very potent; for as they rolled and echoed round the
sea-cave it seemed as if the vaulted roof rose higher, and Pepino,
glancing this way and that in terror, saw that the level of the water
was sinking. Shelf by shelf the sea sank down the rock, leaving
dripping walls of which no living man had ever seen the shape before;
and Pepino, keeping the boat steady with his oars, shook with fear as
he saw the top of a marble staircase rear itself erect and shiny out
of the depths of the ocean. Still the English student rolled out the
sonorous words, which rang triumphantly through the cave, and still
the water sank stair by stair, till suddenly it paused--the readers
voice had stopped, and slowly, steadily the sea began to rise again.
The spell was broken. A page was missing from the book! The Englishman
in despair clutched at the pages as if he would tear them piecemeal.
Instantly the crash of thunder rang through the cave, the sea surged
back to its old level, the marble staircase leading to the treasure
was engulfed, and the boatman, screaming on the name of the Madonna,
was whirled out of the cavern into the light of day again.
Close below me is a little reef or island of yellow pozzolano stone,
jutting out from the Punta di Coroglio, which is the name of the most
westerly cliff of the Posilipo, that through which the tunnel runs.
Under the island there is a tiny creek with a beach of yellow sand;
the spot is so silent that I can hear the ripple plashing on the
beach. That rock is a famous one. It is the "Scoglio di Virgilio," the
Rock of Virgil, by all tradition a favourite haunt of the great poet,
and the spot in which he practised his enchantments.
Petrarch said he did not believe in those enchantments. But then King
Robert questioned him about them at a moment when both were riding
with a gallant party, and the joy of life was surging high enough to
make men doubt all achievements but those of battle or of love. Had
Petrarch sat alone watching the sunset bathe the Scoglio di Virgilio
with gold, he might have judged the matter differently. At any rate
twenty generations of Neapolitans since his day have accepted the
beliefs of thirty more who went before them, and set down Virgil as a
magician. Why must we be wiser than fifty generations of mankind?
To be a wizard is not to be wicked! Virgil's fair fame is in no
danger. There was no malignity in any of the spells wrought out on
that little headland. Each of them conferred a benefit on the city
which the poet loved. One by one the woes of Naples were assuaged by
the beneficent enchanter; its flies, its serpents, the fatal tendency
of butcher's meat to go bad, exposure to volcanic fires, all were held
in check by the power of the enchanter.
A stranger visiting Naples ten centuries ago would have found it
studded with the ingenious inventions of the wizard. Perhaps the
device for bridling the audacity of Vesuvius might be the first to
strike him. It was nothing less than a horse of bronze bestridden by
an archer, whose notched arrow was ever on the string, its point
directed at the summit of the mountain. This menace sufficed to hold
the unruly demons of the fire in check, and might do so to this hour
were it not that one day a countryman coming into Naples from the
Campagna, and looking at the statue for the hundredth time felt bored
by seeing the archer had not fired off his arrow yet, and so did it
for him. The shaft sped through the air, striking the rim of the
crater, which straightway boiled over and spouted fire, and from that
day to this no man has found the means of placing another arrow on the
string. It is a thousand pities. San Gennaro has taken up the duty
now, and stands pointing imperiously with outstretched hand bidding
the volcano halt. He had some success too. In 1707, when the fires of
the volcano turned night into day, and its smoke converted day into
night, San Gennaro was carried in procession as far as the Porta
Capuana, and had no sooner come in sight of the mountain than the
thunders ceased, the smoke was scattered, the stars appeared, and
Naples was at peace. But as a rule the holiness of the saint impresses
the demons less than the menace of the arrow, and the mountain goes on
burning.
As for the bronze fly which the good poet made and set high on one of
the city gates, where it banished every other insect from the town, it
certainly is not in Naples now. Many people must have wished it were.
The story runs that the young Marcellus was intercepted by Virgil one
day as he was going fowling, and desired to decide whether he would
rather have a bird which would catch all other birds, or a fly which
would drive away all flies. Nobody who knows Naples can doubt the
answer. Marcellus, it is true, thought fit to consult the Emperor
Augustus before replying; but that fact only adds to the weight of his
decision. He decided on the fly, and many a man listening in the
midnight to the deadly humming outside his mosquito curtains will
lament the loss of Virgil's fly.
It is an Englishman, one John of Salisbury, who collects these pretty
tales for us; and he has another which, as it supplies a reason for an
historical fact which must have puzzled many people in the history of
Naples, is the better worth recording, and may indeed have the luck to
please both clever and stupid people in one moment.
The puzzling fact is to discover how on earth it happened that the
city which in Middle Ages bore a somewhat evil reputation for
surrendering itself light-heartedly at the first summons of any
conqueror, yet held such a different repute in earlier days, having
remained faithful to the Greek Empire in Constantinople when Amalfi
had fallen and Salerno received a stranger garrison, which resisted
heroically every attack of Lombard or of Norman, and saw army after
army retire baffled from before its walls. Whither had all that
stout-heartedness fled in the days when French, Spanish, and German
conquerors found no more resistance in the Siren city than in a
beautiful woman to whom one man's love is as much as any other's? How
came that old glory to sink into shame, to accept slavery and to
forget faith? The answer is that in the old days the city was kept by
a spell of the enchanter Virgil.
Virgil, it seems, musing on this point of rock throughout long
moonlight nights, had constructed a palladium. It consisted of a model
of the city, inclosed in a glass bottle, and as long as this fragile
article remained intact the hosts of besiegers encamped in vain
beneath the walls. The Emperor Henry the Sixth was the first who
managed to break in. The city fathers rushed to their palladium to
discover why for the first time it had failed to protect them. The
reason was but too plain. There was a small crack in the glass!
Through that crack all the virtue went out of the palladium, and until
the great upstirring of heroic hearts which the world owes to France
at the close of the eighteenth century, Naples was never credited
again with any marked disposition to resist attack or to strike
courageously for freedom. I am not sure whether those who know best
the inner heart of Naples would claim that the great deeds wrought
since then are to be attributed to any new palladium; but, for my
part, if spells are to be spoken of, I prefer to hold that the long
age of sloth and slavery is that which needs the explanation of black
magic, and that neither the loyal Naples of old days nor the free
Naples of the present time owes any debt to other sources than its own
high spirit and its natural stout heart, which slept for centuries,
but are now awake again.
The setting sun has dropped so far towards the sea that the tide
begins to wash in grey and gold around the yellow cliffs. The bay is
covered with dark shades falling from the sky in masses, and a little
wind rising from the west ruffles the water constantly. Only the ridge
of Ischia yet holds the light, and there it seems as if a river of
soft gold flowed along the mountain-top, vivid and pure, turning all
the peak of Epomeo to a liquid reflection, impalpable as the sky
itself. But the glow fades even as I watch it; and the approach of
chilly evening warns me not to loiter on the lonely hillside. I wander
down across the hollow, passing near the broken theatre, and so strike
a path which climbs up the further hill between high walls and hedges,
where it is already almost dark, bringing me out at length on the main
road which crosses the headland, just where a row of booths is set to
catch the soldi of those Neapolitans who have strayed out here in
search of evening freshness. There is a clear, sharp air upon this
high ground; and the young moon climbing up the sky sends a faint,
silvery light upon the sea. The road winds on as beautifully as a man
need wish. On the left hand rises the hill, on the right the ground
drops in sharp, swift slopes, cleft with deep ravines where the cliff
is sometimes sheer and sometimes passable for men. All these hollows
are filled with vegetation of surpassing beauty--here a belt of dark
green pines, there a grove of oranges thatched over to protect them
from the sun. Golden lemons gleam out of the rich foliage, hanging
thick and numberless upon the trees. The bare stems of fig trees are
bursting out into their first yellow leaf; and the hedges of red roses
and abutilon fill every nook with masses of bright colour unknown
except in lands where spring comes with gentle touch and warm, sweet
days of sunny weather. Far down amid the depths of this luxuriance of
fruit and flowers the sea washes round some creek or curved white
beach, and there built out with terraces and balconies of pure white
stone are villas which repeat the splendour of those Roman homes over
whose ruins they are built and whose altars lie still in the
innumerable caverns which pierce the base of the old legendary
headland.
In the silvery dusk of this spring evening the beauty of these ravines
brimming over with fruits and flowers is quite magical. I pause beside
a low wall, over which a man may lean breast high, and gaze down
through the shadows spreading fast among the trellised paths below.
The fading light has robbed the lemons of their colour; but the
crimson roses are flaming still against a heavy background of dark
firs, and beyond them the path winds out upon a little beach, where
the tide breaks at the foot of yellow cliffs, and a boat is rocking at
her moorings. Beyond the outline of the wooded cliff the grey sea lies
darkening like a steely mirror; and lifting my eyes I can see the spit
of rock on which stands the enchanted Castle of the Egg, black and
grim as ever, and higher still Vesuvius towering amid the pale sky and
the stars, its slowly coiling pillar of dark smoke suffused with a
rosy glow, the reflection of the raging furnace hidden in its cone.
Already one or two lamps are flashing on the shore. The day is nearly
gone, and the beautiful Southern night is come.
Many people had wandered up from Naples to enjoy the taste of
approaching summer on this height, where surely the scent of roses is
more poignant than elsewhere and the outlook over land and sea is of
incomparable beauty. As I walked on slowly down the road my ears
caught the tremulous shrill melody of a mandolin, and a man's voice
near at hand trolled forth the pretty air of "La vera sorrentina." I
stopped to listen. The voice was sweet enough, and some passion was in
the singer.
"Ma la sgrata sorrentina
Non ha maje di me pieta!"
The music came from a little roadside restaurant, half open to the
sky, where a few people sat at tables overlooking the sea. I strolled
in, and sat sipping my vino di Posilipo while the mandolin thrummed
till the singer grew tired, took his fees, and went off to some other
cafe. The wine is not what it was in Capaccio's days. "Semper
Pausilypi vigeat poculum!" cries the jolly topographer, "and may
Jupiter himself lead the toasts!" By all means, if he will; but I fear
the son of Saturn will not be tempted from Olympus by the contents of
the purple beaker set before me at the price of three soldi. "It is
pure, it is fragrant, it is delicious," Capaccio goes on, waxing more
eloquent with every glass. "In the fiercest heat it is grateful to the
stomach, it goeth down easily, it promoteth moisture, it molesteth
neither the liver nor the reins, nor doth it even obfuscate the head!
Its virtue is not of those that pass away; for whether of this year,
last year, or of God knows when, it hath still the scent of flowers,
and lyeth sweetly on the tongue." I think Capaccio must have had a
vineyard here, and sold his wines by auction. Far beneath me I could
hear the washing of the sea, and the moon climbing up the sky
scattered a gleam of silver here and there upon the water. Naples
stretched darkly round the curving shore, while high upon the ridge
the Castle of St. Elmo stood out black and solid against the night
sky, with the low priory in front, sword and cowl dominating the city,
as ever through her history, whether for good or ill.
In dusk or sunshine no man who looks upon this view will need to ask
why Virgil loved it, and desired to be buried near the spot whence he
had been used to watch it. Not far away upon my left, above the grotto
which leads to Pozzuoli, is the tomb traditionally known as his. There
are many who believe and some who doubt; but there is a mediaeval tale
about the matter which is well worth telling. It was commonly reported
in the days of Hohenstaufen and Anjou that the bones of Virgil were
buried in a castle surrounded by the sea. There is no other fortress
to which this could apply than the Castle of the Egg.
In the reign of Roger, King of Sicily, a certain scholar--they are
always English, in these legends!--who had wandered far in quest of
learning, came into the royal presence with a petition. The King, who
found him wise and grave, and took pleasure in his conversation, was
willing to grant his wish, whatever it might be; whereon the
Englishman replied that he would not abuse the royal favour, nor beg
for any mere ephemeral pleasure, but would ask a thing which in the
eyes of men must seem but small, namely, that he might have the bones
of Virgil, wheresoever he might find them in the realm of Sicily. It
was even then long since forgotten in what spot precisely the body of
the great poet had been laid; and it seemed to the King little likely
that a stranger from the north should be able to discover what had
remained hidden from the Neapolitans. So he gave consent, and the
Englishman set forth for Naples, armed with letters to the Duke,
giving him full power to search wherever he would. The citizens
themselves had no fear of his success in a quest where they had often
failed, and so made no effort to restrain him. The scholar searched
and dug, guiding his operations by the power of magic. At last he
broke into the centre of a mountain, where not one cleft betrayed the
existence of any cavity or tomb. There lay the body of the mighty
poet, unchanged and calm as if he slept. Full eleven centuries he had
lain silently in a rest unbroken by the long-resounding tread of
barbarous armies from the north, flooding and desolating the fair
empire which must have seemed to him likely to outlast the world. I
wish that some one of those who broke into the sepulchre, and shed the
light of day once more upon those features which had slept so long in
darkness, had told us with what feelings he looked upon them and saw
the very lips that had spoken to Augustus, and the cheek which Horace
kissed. I think the men who found themselves in the sudden presence of
so much greatness must have stood there with a certain tremor, as
those others did who not long afterwards disturbed the bones of Arthur
and of Guenevere at Glastonbury, daring to lift and touch the long
fair tresses which brought Lancelot to shame.
These men who found the tomb of Virgil would have done well if they
had sealed it up again and lost the secret, so that the bones might
lie unto this hour on the spot where the spirit is so well remembered.
But the English scholar had the King's warrant, and claimed at least
the books on which the wizard's head was propped. Those the Duke of
Naples gave him, but the bones he refused, and had them taken for
greater safety to Castel dell'Uovo, where they lay behind an iron
grating and were shown to anyone who desired to see them. But if they
were at any time disturbed, the air would darken suddenly, high gusts
of storm would roar around the battlements of the castle, and the sea
beating heavily about the rocks would rage as if demanding vengeance
for the insult.
Such is the tale told by Gervasius of Tilbury, who has been dead
almost half as long as Virgil. It may be true or untrue. I am not fond
of climbing up into the judgment seat, or attempting to recognise
white-robed truth in the midst of the throng of less worthy, though
more amusing, characters which throng Italian legend. Least of all on
such a night as this, when the soft wind blowing over the sea from the
enchanted Castle of the Egg fills the air with whispering suggestions
of old dead things and calls back many a tale of inimitable tragedy
wrought out upon the shore of the gulf which lies before me--a furnace
in all ages of hot passions and sensuous delights such as leave deep
marks upon the memory of man. That most wilful quality is not unlike
the echo in the hollow of some overhanging rock. It will repeat the
sounds that please it, but no others, while even those it will
distort, adding something wild or unearthly to every one, however
ordinary. So the memory of the people selects capriciously those
circumstances which it cherishes; and even while it hands them on
from generation to generation it is ever adding fact to fact with the
cunning of him who writes a fairy tale, casting glamour round the
sordid details, struggling towards the beautiful or terrible--even not
seldom towards the scandalous.
A little lower on the slope of the hill, well in sight from the point
at which I sit, there is a vast and ruined building on the very margin
of the sea. In the dusk light I can clearly see its two huge wings
thrust out into the water, and the broken outline of its roof breaking
the pale sky. The tide washes round its foundations. The whole mass
lies black and silent, except at one point where a restaurant has
intruded itself into the shell of a once splendid hall, and lights
flicker round the empty windows which were built for the pleasure of a
court. Three hundred years ago this palace was begun for the wife of a
Spanish viceroy, Donna Anna Carafa. It was never finished, and has
been put to a number of degrading uses, being at one time a quarantine
station, at another a stable for the horses of the tramway, while a
few fishermen have always housed their wives and children in its old
ruined chambers, undeterred by the tales which associate the ruin with
the spirit of the Queen Giovanna.
Queen Giovanna is so great a personage in Naples that it is worth
while to consider her particularly. There are few spots within thirty
miles of Naples where one does not hear of her too amorous life and
her tragic death. I doubt if there are half a dozen guides or
vetturini in all the city who, if asked the name of this great
building, will not answer that it is "Il Palazzo della Regina
Giovanna," and on being further questioned will not tell a doleful
story of how she was strangled in one of the deserted chambers. The
stranger, ignorant of Naples, will perhaps set down this fact, pleased
to discover a trace of history yet lingering in the recollection of
the people, and will cherish it carefully until he is told the same
tale at Castel Capuano, on the other side of the city, with the
addition of certain particulars which, by our narrow northern way of
thinking, are damaging to Queen Giovanna's character. For instance, it
is said of her that she was in those early days so convinced a
democrat as to choose her lovers freely from among the sovereign
people. They were doubtless gratified by her choice; but the pleasure
faded when they discovered in due course of time that each favourite
in turn, after the fickle Queen grew tired of him, was expected or
compelled to leap from the top of a high tower, thus carrying all his
knowledge of the secret scandals of a court by a short cut into the
next world. A cruel Queen, it is true; but how prudent! Any one of us
might leave a marvellous sweet memory of himself in the world, if only
he could stop the mouths of--But that has nothing to do with Queen
Giovanna.
This sweet memory, however, this fruit of prudence, is precisely what
the Queen has attained in Naples and in all the surrounding country. I
have questioned many peasants who spoke to me about her, and received
the invariable answer that she was a good Queen, a very good Queen--in
fact, of the best. Now history, listening to this declaration, sighs
and shakes her head despairingly. There were two queens named
Giovanna--leaving out several others who, for various reasons, do not
come into the reckoning. The first was certainly a better woman than
the second, but she is credibly believed to have begun her reign when
quite a girl by murdering her first husband, after which she departed
in various ways from the ideal of Sunday-schools. The second was an
atrocious woman, concerning whose ways of life it is better to say as
little as possible. The first was strangled, though not in Naples, or
its neighbourhood, but at the Castle of Muro, far down in Apulia. The
second had innumerable lovers, and was, perhaps, one of the worst
women ever born.
The Queen Giovanna of tradition seems to be a blend of these two
sovereigns, laden with the infirmities of both, and loved the more for
the burden of the scandals which she bears. It is a charming trait,
this disposition of poor humanity to glorify dead sinners! Conscious
of their own imperfections, mindful of the condescension of a queen
who steps down to the moral level of her people, the Neapolitans
welcome her with outstretched hands, and love her for her
peccadilloes. Legend confers a pleasanter immortality than history,
earned less painfully, bestowed more charitably, and quite as durable.