THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES GIFT OF Wcstwood Book Store By Andre Maurel Little Cities of Italy 2 Vols. 30 /Has. Maps A Month in Rome 7/5 /Has. 30 Maps A Fortnight in Naples About 80 /Has. By Andre Maurel Little Cities of Italy 2 Vols. 30 Illus, Maps A Month in Rome 115 lUus. 30 Maps A Fortnight in Naples About 80 Illus- ist Day: In Otia Natam Parthenopen. 2nd Day: The Failure of the Gothic. 3rd Day: The Failure of the Renaissance. 4th Day: The Triumph of the Baroque. 5th Day: The Porcelain Cabinet. 6th Day: Treys. 7th Day: Palaeopolis. 8th Day: In Memory of Pliny. Qth Day: The Two Ubus. loth Day: The Lovers' Coast. nth Day: The Happy Isle. i2th Day: The Heaving Region. I3th Day: Tea at the Villa of Lucullus. i4th Day: With the Sibyl. 1 5th Day: The Poison Case. A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES BY ANDR MAUREL AUTHOR OF " LITTLE CITIES OF ITALY," "A MONTH IN ROME," ETC. AUTHORIZED ENGLISH EDITION TRANSLATED BY HELEN GERARD AUTHOR OF "THE STORY OF THE THIRTEEN COLONIES," ETC. With nO Illustrations and 16 Maps G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK AND LONDON Cbc 'Knickerbocker pre00 1921 Copyright, 1921 by G. P. Putnam's Sons Made in the United States of America CONTENTS FIRST DAY PAGE IN OTIA NATAM PARTHENOPEN ANCIENT NAPLES ...... i SECOND DAY THE FAILURE OF THE GOTHIC ANGEVIN NAPLES ...... 32 THIRD DAY THE FAILURE OF THE RENAISSANCE ARA- GONIAN NAPLES ..... 70 FOURTH DAY THE TRIUMPH OF THE BAROQUE NAPLES UNDER THE VICEROYS .... 104 FIFTH DAY THE PORCELAIN CABINET NAPLES UNDER THE BOURBONS ...... 149 iii 20OOG89 CONTENTS SIXTH DAY PAGE TREYS THE MUSEUM 167 SEVENTH DAY PAL/EOPOLIS POMPEII . . . . .190 EIGHTH DAY IN MEMORY OF PLINY HERCULANEUM . . 223 NINTH DAY THE Two UBUS, KINGS OF NAPLES VOMERO, FERDINAND IV. OF NAPLES, I. OF THE Two SICILIES CASTELLAMMARE, FERDINAND II. 241 TENTH DAY THE LOVERS' COAST SALERNO AND AMALFI 276 ELEVENTH DAY THE HAPPY ISLE SORRENTO AND CAPRI . 296 TWELFTH DAY THE HEAVING REGION, BOSOM OF BAIA POZZUOLI . . . . . . 316 CONTENTS THIRTEENTH DAY PACE TEA AT THE VILLA OF LUCULLUS BAIA, MISEXO ...... 337 FOURTEENTH DAY WITH THE SIBYL CUM.-E, LAKE AVERNUS . 357 FIFTEENTH DAY THE POISON CASE VESUVIUS . . . 375 ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PACK VIEW OF NAPLES FROM THE VILLA PATRIZI . 4 Alinari VIA CARACCIOLO, NAPLES .... 5 Alinari FOUNTAIN, VILLA NAZIONALE ... 5 Alinari STREET VENDERS IN THE STRADA SANTA LUCIA 14 Alinari A STREET IN NAPLES, SANT' ELMO IN THE BACKGROUND ...... 22 Author A HOUSE IN NAPLES ..... 22 Primoli CASTEL DELL' Ovo . . 23 Alinari STRADA SANTA LUCIA AND THE PIZZOFALCONE . 23 Alinari MONUMENT OF ROBERT THE WISE, CHURCH OF SANTA CHIARA, NAPLES . . 46 Alinari ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE DETAIL OF THE MONUMENT OF ROBERT THE WISE ....... 46 Alinari TOMB OF GIULIO CARACCIOLO, CHURCH OF SAN GIOVANNI A CARBONARA, NAPLES . . 47 Alinari TOMB OF GIOVANNI CARACCIOLO, CHAPEL OF SUNSHINE, CHURCH OF SAN GIOVANNI A CARBONARA, NAPLES .... 47 Alinari MONUMENT OF ANTONIO CARACCIOLO, CHAPEL OF THE CARACCIOLI DI Vico, CHURCH OF SAN GIOVANNI A CARBONARA, NAPLES . . 47 Alinari MONUMENT OF GALEAZZO CARACCIOLO, CHAPEL OF THE CARACCIOLI DI Vico, CHURCH OF SAN GIOVANNI A CARBONARA, NAPLES . . 47 Alinari THE BAPTISM (FRESCO BY GIOTTO), CHURCH OF THE INCORONATA, NAPLES .... 50 Alinari THE TRIUMPH OF THE CHURCH (FRESCO BY GIOTTO), CHURCH OF THE INCORONATA, NAPLES 50 Alinari THE HEAD OF A HORSE, NATIONAL MUSEUM, NAPLES . . . . . . .51 Alinari ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE PIAZZA AND CHURCH OF SANTA MARIA DEL CARMINE, NAPLES . . . . 51 Alinari TRIUMPHAL ARCH OF ALFONSO D' ARAGON, CASTEL Nuovo, NAPLES .... 76 Alinari DETAIL OF THE TRIUMPHAL ARCH OF ALFONSO D' ARAGON ...... 76 Alinari CASTEL Nuovo, NAPLES .... 76 Alinari PIAZZA DI SAN DOMENICO MAGGIORE, WITH THE CHURCH AND OBELISK, NAPLES ... 77 Alinari INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH OF SANTA RESTITUTA, NAPLES ....... 77 Alinari TOMB OF KING LADISLAUS, CHURCH OF SAN GIOVANNI A CARBONARA, NAPLES . . 80 Alinari MONUMENT OF MARIA OF ARAGON, MONTE OLIVETO, NAPLES . . . . . 80 Alinari TOMB OF CARDINAL RINALDO BRANCACCIO, CHURCH OF SANT' ANGELO A NILO, NAPLES 80 Alinari ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE DETAIL OF TOMB OF CARDINAL RINALDO BRANCACCIO 80 Alinari INTERIOR OF THE CATHEDRAL OF NAPLES . 81 Alinari THE SACRISTY OF THE CHURCH OF SAN DOMENICO MAGGIORE, NAPLES . . .81 Alinari SAINT JOHN, CHURCH OF SAN DOMENICO MAGGIORE, NAPLES ..... 106 Alinari TOMB OF DON PEDRO OF TOLEDO, CHURCH OF SAN GIACOMO MAGGIORE . . . .106 Alinari CAPUAN A GATEWAY, NAPLES . . . . no Alinari THE OBELISK OF JESUS, NAPLES . .no Alinari FOUNTAIN, VILLA NAZIONALE, NAPLES . .in Alinari THE CLOISTERS OF SAN MARTINO, NAPLES . in Alinari THE DESCENT FROM THE CROSS (RIBERA), CHURCH OF SAN MARTINO, NAPLES . .136 Alinari THE PRESEPE, MUSEUM OF SAN MARTINO, NAPLES 136 Alinari ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH OF SAN MARTINO, NAPLES 137 Alinari VIEW OF NAPLES FROM SAN MARTINO . .137 Alinari ROYAL PALACE, NAPLES . . . .152 Alinari THE CHAPEL OF THE ROYAL PALACE . .152 Alinari PIAZZA SAN FERDINANDO AND SAN CARLO THEATRE, NAPLES . . . . .156 Alinari INTERIOR OF THE CHURCH OF SANTA CHIARA, NAPLES 157 Alinari THE CONVENT OF SAN MARCELLING, NAPLES . 157 Author DISILLUSION, CHAPEL OF SANSEVERO, NAPLES . 160 Alinari MODESTY, CHAPEL OF SANSEVERO, NAPLES . 160 Alinari THE DEAD CHRIST, CHAPEL OF SANSEVERO, NAPLES 161 Alinari ROYAL PALACE OF CAPODIMONTE, NAPLES . 161 Alinari PSYCHE, NATIONAL MUSEUM, NAPLES . . 172 Alinari ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE DANCING FAUN, NATIONAL MUSEUM, NAPLES . 173 Alinari THE FARNESE BULL, NATIONAL MUSEUM, NAPLES ....... 173 Alinari THE FARNESE HERCULES, NATIONAL MUSEUM, NAPLES 173 Alinari SOCRATES, NATIONAL MUSEUM, NAPLES . .178 Alinari HOMER, NATIONAL MUSEUM, NAPLES . .178 Alinari EURIPIDES, NATIONAL MUSEUM, NAPLES . 178 Alinari DRUNKEN SILENUS, NATIONAL MUSEUM, NAPLES . . . . . . . 179 Alinari SLEEPING SATYR, NATIONAL MUSEUM, NAPLES. 179 Alinari DRUNKEN SATYR, NATIONAL MUSEUM, NAPLES 179 Alinari NARCISSUS, NATIONAL MUSEUM, NAPLES. . 182 Alinari ORESTES AND ELECTRA, NATIONAL MUSEUM, NAPLES ....... 182 Alinari ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE THE DORYPHOROS, NATIONAL MUSEUM, NAPLES ....... 182 Alinari PAUL III WITH His GRANDSONS, NATIONAL MUSEUM, NAPLES . . . . .183 Alinari DANAE AND CUPID, NATIONAL MUSEUM, NAPLES 183 Alinari STREET OF FORTUNE, POMPEII . . . 192 Alinari HOUSE OF THE FAUN, POMPEII . . . 192 Alinari POMPEII AND VESUVIUS . . . . 193 Alinari THE GREAT THEATRE, POMPEII . . .193 Alinari PERISTYLE IN THE HOUSE OF THE VETTII, POMPEII ....... 196 Alinari THE TEMPLE OF Isis, POMPEII . . . 196 Alinari THE CHILD WITH THE GOOSE, HOUSE OF THE VETTII, POMPEII ..... 197 Alinari THE FORUM, POMPEII (Two VIEWS) . . 202 Alinari ROYAL VILLA OF PORTICI .... 228 Author xiv ILL USTRA TIONS FACING PAGE HERCULANEUM AND RESINA .... 228 Author RESINA ....... 229 Alinari' HERCULANEUM ...... 238 Author HOUSE OF ARGUS, HERCULANEUM . . . 238 Alinari MERCURY IN REPOSE, NATIONAL MUSEUM, NAPLES 239 Alinari DANCING WOMEN, NATIONAL MUSEUM, NAPLES 239 Alinari VOMERO . . . . . . 262 Author THE PLAIN OF STADIA AND VESUVIUS FROM CASTELLAMMARE , . '. . . 262 Author CHURCH OF SAN FRANCESCO DI PAOLO, NAPLES 263 Alinari CASTELLAMMARE . . . . . .263 Alinari THE AMBO IN THE CATHEDRAL, RAVELLO . 282 Alinari VIEW FROM HOTEL PALUMBO, RAVELLO, SHOWING MAIORI AND MINORI . . . 282 Alinari ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE THE CATHEDRAL, AMALFI .... 283 Alinari VIEW OF AMALFI FROM THE GROTTO OF SAN CRISTOFORO ...... 283 Alinari CLOISTER OF THE ONE-TIME CAPPUCHIN MONASTERY, AMALFI ..... 288 Alinari LA CORNICHE FROM SALERNO TO AMALFI . 288 Author AMALFI ....... 289 Alinari SALERNO FROM THE HARBOUR . . . 289 Alinari SORRENTO, SHOWING THE MARINA GRANDE . 298 Alinari GROTTO OF MATROMANIA, WITH NATURAL ARCH, CAPRI ....... 299 Alinari VILLA OF TIBERIUS, CAPRI .... 299 Alinari THE BLUE GROTTO, CAPRI .... 304 Alinari VIEW OF THE FARAGLIONI FROM THE MONAS- TERY, CAPRI ...... 304 Alinari MARINA GRANDE, CAPRI .... 305 Alinari ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE PALACE OF BONN' ANNA, NAPLES . . . 305 Alinari THE ROMAN AMPHITHEATRE, POZZUOLI . .318 Alinari POZZUOLI FROM THE BAY . . . -319 Alinari RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF SERAPIS . . . 330 Alinari POZZUOLI FROM THE BAY . . . - 331 Alinari THE SOLFATARA, Pozzuon . . . 33i Alinari BAIA, SHOWING THE TEMPLE OF NEPTUNE . 338 Alinari MlSENUM AND THE MARE MORTO, THE ISLE OF ISCHIA IN THE DISTANCE , . ... . 339 Brogi THE CAPO MISENO FROM THE SEA . . . 339 Brogi CASTLE OF BAIA . . . . . . 356 Alinari THE CAPO MISENO WITH THE MARE MORTE ON ONE SIDE AND THE BAY OF BAIA ON THE OTHER 356 Brogi LAKE FUSARO . . . . . . 357 Sommer ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE THE ACROPOLIS OF CUM.E .... 357 Author THE CASTLE OF ALFONSO OF ARAGON, ISCHIA . 364 Alinari THE ARCO FELICE, ON THE WAY TO CUM^E . 364 Alinari LAKE AVERNUS ...... 365 Alinari GROTTO OF THE SIBYL, LAKE AVERNUS . . 366 Sommer LAKE AVERNUS ...... 366 Author ERUPTION OF MT. VESUVIUS IN 1906 . . 376 Fumagali ASCENDING MT. VESUVIUS .... 380 Author THE SUMMIT OF MT. VESUVIUS AS SEEN FROM THE OBSERVATORY ..... 380 Alinari THE CABLE RAILWAY, MT. VESUVIUS . .381 Alinari A CAR OF THE CABLE RAILWAY, MT. VESUVIUS 381 Alinari First Day IN OTIA NATAM PARTHENOPEN Ancient Naples AM entering the Bay of Naples. The levels and the heights before me are like the setting of a magnificent stage. The background is high and sinuous, and the centre rises and stands out free from an ample level. The centre is Vesuvius, on the left are the Phlegraean Fields, on the right stand the mountains of Sorrento, and, in the immediate fore- ground, on either side, the rocks of Ischia and Capri heralds of the royal pageant to be presented here rise from the blue carpet of the sea, strewn with lilies and roses. In this scene of abundance, spread out by nature, of this harmonious generosity of earth and waters, Naples is the bright touch in floral decorations or it is the rich drapery with which the scene painter enlivens a corner of his ensemble, to graduate its values, to soften its high colours, and cleverly to distribute its lights. The city holds together the sensations that are inclined to disperse in so much amplitude and profusion, re- deeming the loss of clear-cut realities and grouping the scattered and confused ideas too suddenly awakened by this vision, so strong in masses, so sumptuous in de- tail. Is it insisting to continue and say that almost insignificant as Naples is in this immensity, by the mere accident of its position in just the place where it should be, it holds mountains and plains together and distributes all the minor accessories to the grandeur of the panorama in perfect balance and harmony? But Naples is more than a stage property in the great set- ting of the bay, more than a pivotal thought for the philosopher. It is an entity of action; and, as figures of speech come to mind imperiously in this flowery country, I confess to yet another. Some dewy morn- ing, look at the taut and iridescent threads of a spi- IN OTIA NAT AM PARTHENOPEN der's web upon a heap of dried grass. Interlacing through the delicately spread design, the fine threads stretch from one blade of grass to another, firmly at- taching the web that seems almost to float above the mass that sustains it. Half hidden, in the farthest corner, a bloated little grey point attracts your eye and the work is explained. From its hole, the small insect, lying in wait for its prey, presides over all this brilliant show. So Naples close to the edge of the Phlegraean Fields, crouching on either side of the moun- tain of San Elmo, in her network of black threads, rail- ways and waterways extending in all directions, is the industrious arachnid weaving her web ready to take all monsters, broken elytra, for her glory and subsistence. We, too, shall soon be fascinated by this attractive and dominating city. We fly towards it with our ap- proaching boat, seeing nothing as yet but its brilliance, its slender form, and welcoming aspect. From the middle of the bay, Sorrento behind us, Vesuvius at our right, Naples is alone now before our eyes, lying along the beach. How pure it is in its beauty, height- ened by the green scarf of the Villa Nazionale lying lightly across it ! In its radiance it is smiling with a thousand dimples, playing with the foam that caresses it and with the branches that fan it. Still so young, so full of life, brilliant with all the radiance lighted by the sun, Naples is not a grey spider A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES in her web to us now, but the queen of this country, as was, in times past, the Siren Parthenope. We are tempted to fancy Vesuvius the hat she has just put off, the mountain her cloak, and the sea her drawing- room. If ever a myth corresponded to the things that gave it birth, it is this one. From the depths of her grotto, Parthenope watches the travellers attracted by the sweetness and the majesty of these shores. No- thing less than the subtlety of Ulysses was sufficient to escape her. The sea, between Miseno and Minerva, was hers, the domain today belonging to Naples, de- scendant of the ancient Siren, heiress of her irresist- ible charms. The city absorbs everything here, and we hasten to it, disdaining all other wonders, scoffing at danger, understanding at last why so many genera- tions have repeated: " Vedi Napoli e poi mori!" We hasten to see it, yes, but not to die! 1 From whatever point we see it, from the Via Parthenope, lying along the sea, or from the slopes of Vomero be- hind it, wherever we respond to the welcoming hotel, we see her radiance that casts the spell of enchantment over the mere act of living. If we like to take our ease at the price of i or $5 a day, in reception-rooms which if reserved to us alone, would make our sojourn cost a 1 To follow the advice of this saying, with its double meaning, instead of dying, the traveller should go to see the enchanting little village of Mori. H. G. Via Caracciolo, Naples Fountain, Villa Nazionale, Naples IN OTIA NATAM PARTHENOPEN small fortune; if we choose a simple but comfortable lodging, gay with floods of sunshine; if we prefer to hide behind bushes of camellias whose flowers are strewn upon the ground, or under a trellis of April roses, Naples is waiting for us in abundance of luxuries better able than any other city in the world to satisfy the most delicate as well as the most exacting tastes in the creature comforts combined with the highest aesthetics of purely physical aspects. The joys and comforts of a balmy climate are offered by many other places on the Mediterrean coasts; some, as in Sicily, with the addition of historic ruins, poetical associations, and natural grandeur for the inspiration to noble thoughts. But Gustave Flaubert said the truth: "One must go to Naples to dip again into youth, to love life. The very sun is in love with it." And Charles VIII., arriving here after his triumphal march through Italy, wrote to his friends in France: "It only lacks Adam and Eve to make it a paradise." As we approach, we begin to see this very modern paradise as it is. We have left the heralds, Ischia, far on our left, and Capri, nearer, on our right, and are within the capes, Miseno, near Ischia, Sorrento, near Capri. Like the deep green of a pine grove against the mother-of-pearl of a sand dune, lies the open park of the Villa Nazionale against the mass of the town above the beach. As yet, its palms, its evergreen oaks, A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES and its oleanders are as indistinguishable as the broad paths that thread it and the broad streets of the fash- ionable quarter of Chiaia that lie between it and the hill of Vomero. The sea laps the stone quays of the shore, the sails flecking it with pink, and Castel dell' Ovo rides the waves that move in trailing lengths of amethyst bordered with swan's down. On the left, the height of Pizzofalcone, rushing out from the Hill of San Elmo to meet us, though it cut the city into two to do so, fixes its houses like plaques upon the rocks whose caverns they seem to wish to hide. On our right is the wonderful outward curve of the base of Vesuvius, and its cone, cut off now, threatens without frightening us. From Castellammare to Naples, the loins of the perilous mountain are girt by a narrow belt studded with the villages of dramatic name: Castel- lammare, Torre Annunziata, Torre del Greco, Resina, Portici, San Giovanni a Teduccio, Pazzigno an un- broken chain of tragic grace, of smiling horror. High above is a beautiful cloud of smoke that sometimes rests like a cap upon the crater, sometimes envelopes it, sometimes leaves it free. Vineyards creep up to- wards that truncated peak, but they are soon displaced by the stones of lava turned brown under the rays of the sun. The arm of the bay on our left appears, perhaps, a trifle shorter than it is, Miseno being cut off from us by OTIA NAT AM PARTHENOPEN Posilipo. But when we are ashore and high enough to look over that promontory, it will seem but a slight protuberance, and Cape Miseno will be the headland that balances the Punta di Campanella, which I like best by its old name, Cape Minerva. Behind Miseno, Baia balances Castellammare, as Bagnoli and Pozzuoli pair off against Portici and Resina. Now, spread over all this a fine sunlight without ap- parent vibrations as without vapours, a steady light that penetrates to the depths of caverns, to the lowli- est alley of the villages, bringing out the details of every house, every bush. By turns this light is white, pink, blue, brown, as it falls upon village, vineyard, wood, or mountain, spreading out its rays, while sky and sea absorb all the blue that it can yield. Under it, as in no other conditions, everything takes its true value. It is nature's greatest wonder, belonging ex- clusively to this land, revealing it in the most real- istic clearness that an exacting and critical mind can desire. However crude they may be, Nature's lines here are of disarming perfection. Ah, how true they must be in order not to give offence in any corner whatever, even those of Vesuvius which do not fall, but spread themselves out ! There are no hard lines with all this freedom. All flows in curves, nothing is precipitous, not even Cape Miseno with all its ir- regularities. Both softness and brutality are absent. A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES Everything has pride without haughtiness, dignity without stiffness. If ever the fiction of the architect of the universe seems plausible, it is in the face of this monument of nature. What a kindly workman a God who could sketch out such a masterpiece ! Om- nipotence is revealed by the very restraint. The au- thor never falls into excess. Everything is in its place, in its position, in its frame, under the light which alone can bring out its values. x 1 M. Maurel here quotes the exquisite lines of Albert Me"rat from La Ville de marbre (Paris, Alphonse Lemerre). COUCHER DE SOLEIL SUR LE GOLFE Le soleil, sans hate a descendre, Sur le Pausilippe, le soir, Comme un dieu fauve vient s'asseoir, Baignant d'or rouge le ciel tendre. II palit, glisse. L'on voit mieux, Quand 1'^blouissement recule, A la ligne du cre'puscule Les rayons, fils harmonieux. Sur 1'autre rive transparente Et me"lodieuse qui n'a Que des noms comme Resina Pour ses murs roses, ou Sorrente, Au flanc droit du petit sentier, L 'ombre en tridents, au bas de 1'arbre, Comme des acanthes de marbre Sculpte les feuilles du figuier. 7.V OTIA NAT AM PARTHENOPEN Surely it is only from the loftiest heights of Parnassus that one can fully appreciate this voluptuous perfec- tion, this supremely Greek work of the Bay of Naples, reflected in Albert Merat's faultless verse. The acro- poli and the stadii of the untravelled imagination are here preserved by nature. In early times Naples was Greek. Temple and theatre, one can only see in them the hand of antiquity and the great miracle is that they still remain accessible to us. Filled with wonder as we gaze about us, we can not help thinking that it must have been the Greeks who planned this gulf and its surroundings. Knowing old Vesuvius and what his tricks must have been in prehistoric times, we still fail to see in this perfect bay, any traces of upheavals to make a shiver of awe chill our admiration. It is human in its perfection of position, construction, and decoration, in its harmony, created by a chisel as bold Elle le troue en decoupures Immobiles de bleu fonce. Tout le paysage est trace En lignes attiquement pures. Ces traits nets sont 1'effet voulu De la lumiere saine et forte, Sans artifice qui la sorte De 1'extrerne et de 1'absolu. Le detail luit dans la distance; L 'ensemble, tout epars qu'il est, Sur le Vesuve violet Se resume en azur intense. A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES as clever, in the illumination by a brush as generous as prudent so Daedalus built, so Phidias sculptured, so Apelles painted. Now that we have had a good view of the stage, let us go on and mingle with the scene. Let us walk in Chiaia at the foot of the tall houses in the solemn squares and wide streets which are new or even in con- struction, let us climb and descend the street-stairway sides of San Elmo, or go round the quays of Pizzofal- cone and pick our way through the narrow and worldly strode which are old, the most cosmopolitan streets in the world, or loiter in the open square or largo filled with trams and cabs and with people from everywhere. Naples has the familiar aspect of the great cities of today, but with just what is necessary of individual character to give it peculiar interest for the traveller. The renown and splendour of the old and universal Via Toledo, now Via Roma, are being somewhat usurped by its prolongation to the sea, the Strada Santa Lucia, lead- ing to the new quays at the foot of Pizzofalcone where now begins the tourists' quarter of wider spaces and of hotels adapted to the foreigners' habits. The Toledo thus modernized would be shorn of the picturesque that we are in search of. It is modern enough, too, starting from the old Largo of San Ferdinando (now modern- ized into a piazza) which has become the focus of IN OTIA NAT AM PARTHENOPEN n tram lines. The adjoining square of the Royal Pa- lace, though it is called the Piazza del Plebiscite, is the best work of the Baroque in Naples. Look at it for what it is, but it lays no hold on the memory. Old Pizzofalcone, on the contrary, still holds up its head between ancient and modern Naples, watching over the bay of Santa Lucia, filled in and built upon with fine new quays and modern hotels, still retaining the appearance that gave rise to its name the "Falcon's Beard." This fortified castle, seen from all parts of the city, seems to watch over us, too, and to wish to protect us, like the carabinieri on days when the emo- tions of the people are likely to run high a preventive or, at least, a menacing protection. Where is the Naples we were expecting to see? We look for it in vain as we wander up into the town, away from the new quays and off the modernized streets. We are in the Naples of the people, the mot- ley crowd, radiant and sordid, in tortuous and en^ cumbered alleys. We scarcely expected to hear the cries of this throng, to be so jostled by the press of carriages, to see the stagnant gutters in the middle of the streets, and that artificial mud oozing under the most beautiful sunshine in the world, gathering con- tinually by reason of somebody's sheer negligence to carry it away. Are men and horses here for the pur- pose of carrying it about on their feet ? 12 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES Never a traveller sleeps his second night in Naples without lament, if not invective upon the city whose colour has been so praised to him. A beautiful scene, yes; but as soon as you look behind it, you find misery and filth. In little streets on which two carriages can hardly pass, he has seen immense palaces with majes- tic courtyards, with cloistered galleries, with monu- mental staircases ; he has seen little shops cut out of the ground floors of these palaces, and industries cluttering their porticoes; he has seen goats climbing their stair- ways and making them unfit for man to pass; he has seen pavement strewn with the pots of the woman who deals in second-hand wares, her dirty children rolling about her among the dogs, and the men squatting wherever they chance to stop ; he has seen work-benches planted in the midst of household debris and gar- bage a week old, upon which women tread with their bare feet ; he has asked himself what all that washing was doing suspended across some of the streets like a thousand punkas, since the yellow shirts upon the backs of men, women, and children, as well as the blackened sheets upon the straw pallets half seen through open doors, cannot have been washed for at least a year ; he has scraped his shoes on the stones stick- ing up by the hundreds in the pavements of the public squares, the Market, at the Porta Capuana, or along the whole length of the old breakwater; he has slipped IN OTIA NATAM PARTHENOPEN 13 scores of times on the refuse rotting underfoot ; he has felt his stomach rise at the sight of children playing marbles among the piles of nauseating filth along a church wall ; he has had to hold his nose and cover his eyes twenty times in as many yards; his clothing has become impregnated with this black dust made up of all the particles of human waste; he has gone out of his way to give a wide berth to a woman combing the hair of another; he has had whiffs of the strange mixtures carried about, hanging from the fists of the sellers, under the names of pizza, of panzarotti, and has seenfragaglie, scapece, spiritose cooking at the bottom of an unsani- tary pot. Worse, the traveller, like any other passer-by, has had refuse from a kitchen fall on his head, and from what a kitchen ! He has even risked a step under a con- venient archway just in time to save himself from a shower of slops thrown from the sixth storey. And, as he lies in his clean bed trying to sleep, he thinks that the man who has not seen all this, who has not gone out the Porta Capuana where the small fish of the sea are offered to the frugality of the people, who has not climbed the slippery steps of certain too well-remem- bered churches or of old streets bordered by hovels into which the sunlight, even the penumbra, never enters ah, that man does not know the nauseating wretchedness into which the children of men may be born! 14 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES Yet the traveller has heard singing and peals of laughter burst from the depths of those hovels ; he will never forget the bliss of that bambino whom he saw de- vouring a suffrito; he has rarely passed a quay or a piazza without seeing curly-headed youngsters contentedly asleep in the sun, if it were winter, or in the shadow if in summer, with nothing whatever on their bodies but pieces of sacking. The glove stitcher on the edge of her basso, before her sewing-machine, hair drawn back, oiled, and with pot-hooks on the temples, hoops in her ears, necklace round her throat, and the variegated fichu crossed over her bosom, is always humming some popular air as she shakes her head, and you would say that she did not know of the existence of the black rivulet at her feet. The housewife appears at her fifth-storey window crying out some onomatopoeia of jargon to the small boy loitering behind his cows, lets down her basket by a cord, in which is the tumbler for the quantity of milk called for. It is a wonder the boy has understood her in the uproar made by her neighbours from the heights of their attics, yelling that they have not received full measure or crying vengeance on more or less imaginary wrong. Not once only has the foreigner, on his morning stroll in the Toledo, seen the downfall and gorgeous scattering of a mountain of fruit and vegetables, and has stopped to watch the patient regathering of the avalanche Alinari Street Venders in the Strada Santa Lucia IN O TIA NA TA M PA R THE NOPE N 1 5 which would overwhelm one of us of all those figs and tomatoes, grapes, beans, and cabbages, radishes, turnips, carrots, all those salads and fennels, especially that beautiful f eatherlike green tail of finocchio; it has become wilted, but will be revived in a moment for already the fruitmonger has begun again his contin- ual slap, slap of the hand, throwing water which re- awakens the fresh colours and revives for a second the drooping leaves of his greens. Who has not seen the fifteen -year- old girl, already almost aging, yet so radiant in her pins and her fichu, and the fifty-two glass beads tinkling about her neck ; who has not seen two toothless, ragged hags chattering at the street comer, gesticulating the little drama they are narrat- ing; who has not seen the cabby on his box, waiting for customers, undo his trousers to sew on a button; who has not given ear to all the spontaneous, fugitive, and violent outbursts of these sensitive and nonchal- ant people ; or has not felt his head swim and his ears ring with the overflowing life and spirits, the songs, the shouts, the effective words, even the murmurs, equally vibrating that man has not seized the higher meaning, the psychological significance, to put it exactly, and the moral lessons that the Neapolitans can teach him in their living proof that poverty is not the only cause of so much abandon. To these people, heedless of de- privation as of wealth, an orange slakes the thirst, two 1 6 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES pennyworth of macaroni is a meal, and, during eight months of the year, the bed they like best is the side- walk. One thinks of Horace singing the otiosa Ne- apolis, of Ovid celebrating in otia natam Parthenopen. The man who has not let go of the Pharisee in himself to the forgiving of everything in all this indifference to civilized exigencies under this balmiest sky in the world, who has not felt a throb of brotherhood with these natures susceptible to the enjoyment of all instincts, even that of the beautiful which sleeps in every child of the Latin lake that man does not know how easy it is to live when one is full of enthusiasm ! If you wish to know the daily existence of this sordid and careless Neapolitan world, read Matilde Serao's Paese di cuccagna. Then you will know where these people live, what they earn, what they eat, and the silly and touching fancies or flattering superstitions which they cherish as of almost sacred importance. But if you wish an explanation and a symbol of this gentle race whose actions are said to be thoughtless because they arise from the depths of their conscience, inspired by the obscure will of the species, go to the little building in the Greek style built by the "Zoologi- cal station" in the centre of the Villa Nazionale. It is the Aquarium and at the same time it is Naples. All the fairyland of colour is there, all the fiery lights that the sun repeats every day at his setting on the IN OTIA NATAM PARTHENOPEN 17 steep sides of Vesuvius and on the points of Sorrento and Capri are there. The seven notes of the scale were enough for Beethoven. The seven colours of the prism furnish the light for all these infinite har- monies of tint. The magnificent and majestic crus- taceans move about cautiously among the pebbles, climbing their transparent walls with prudence, the lively dorados squirm and wriggle upon the invisible larvae, and the formed fish swim over and amongst them. It is the lower life struggling for development toward perfection. Study all these things with no- thing but life and the primitive movements, whose motion only indicates that they are alive; see, on the tall stems with the feathery ends of the papyrus which disclose, when they are ravelled, small shells that move so slowly that you must look at them for a long time to see that they budge; see those corals which are little trees, those crabs which are still rocks or still snails, look well into this half -animal, half -vegetable world from the inaccessible depths and ask yourself if it does not represent the Neapolitan people, resigned or, at least accepting, moving, and living without ever de- manding to know why. The protoplasm which floats upon the surface contains the germ of the highly de- veloped creature to come; so do these children of Nep- tune live because they must live for the ascension of the race to higher states. This medusa with its hang- 1 8 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES ing tentacles of barely moulded jelly, a pink mush- room, milky, impalpable, dancing in the water all day and all night, does nothing but make curtsies with its little balloon-like body up and down, serving no other purpose to our eyes than to graduate and combine the most enchanting tints. Like the people of Naples who dance for the pleasure of dancing, this jelly-fish seems to be a sort of rainbow to reflect the rays of the sun upon its flesh and its gluey shreds. No doubt it has some other reason for existence. We, like they, are ignorant of it, but it is their reason just the same. Do you see that sensitive stem? From it will come out some vibration that will give life to a thing less in- articulate, and, in the evolution of a thousand years, a lobster or a dorado will open its large eyes, ignorant that its life was developed from the reed. The selec- tion goes on every day amongst the Neapolitan people; out of them springs a Mazianello, a Bernini, a Serao. The poor lazzarone knows nothing about it, nor does he care, but none the less he goes on his way, shaking his rags, as the medusa does her skirt, from which float germs that will fertilize other forms. From what other larvae of the past do these of to- day come ? If the world is in constant transformation, not creation, what was their, I may not say initial, but earliest known form? It would be philosophi- IN OTI A NAT AM PARTHENOPEN 19 cal to see in the siren Parthenope one of the primi- tive links between the protoplasm and the human being. The doctrine of the evolution of species should be satisfied by the legend which makes that woman- fish or fish-woman die in her rock-bound home of unrequited love for a mortal man. Was not the first Naples built around her tomb ? Poor Parthenope, less happy than her neighbour Circe! Science, however, is not satisfied with that origin. Although the Greeks attested, on a stone which has been found among the foundations of San Giovanni Maggiore that the Siren was placed here in her tomb, science does not feel obliged to believe them. So many other inscriptions commemorate mere fancies! Naples, leaving fables behind, enters into history about a thousand years before the Christian Era. Let us leave Parthenope doing her best toward the evolution of a human being with legs, and look at the immigrants from Chalcis and from Thebes landing at Ischia and moving on to Cumae . Their too numerous progeny soon made a merry hunt for husbands and wives, like the Horatii among the Curiatii, finding other bands of immigrants come to meet them from Sorrento and Capri. They fought no battles; at least, no poet tells us that they did. Apparently it was a saving of time to embrace at once. Thus Cumse grew until it was able to found two settlements within the bay: one that became Poz- 20 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES zuoli and the one here called Parthenope in memory of Ulysses. There are those, however, who wish to give the plan- tation of Parthenope a more directly Greek origin. The Signora Matilde Serao relates the charming legend of the young virgin, as beautiful as Minerva and Juno, who was loved by Cimon. The horizon of Thessaly was not wide enough for their love which yearned to embrace the universe. Since some of their barbaric relatives were opposed to so much ardour, Cimon carried Parthenope away to the farthermost shore of the gulf of love. Accordingly, in the tomb of the Siren you must see only that of the Neapolitan Eve. That is why Naples is the city of kisses. Parthenope soon became so prosperous a settlement that it roused the jealousy of the parent colony, and the Cumaeans "invaded the country, killed the people, sacked the fields, and returned home." This sentence from Thucydides upon the wars of Syracuse, so admi- rably concise and universally expressive that it may be applied to all conquests, even in our own day, tells just how the Cumaeans lived up to the time-honoured con- ception of civilization. Nevertheless the city of Parthenope survived, to be saved again some five or six hundred years later, when another people, brothers no doubt, the Etruscans, ap- pearing in their ships, threatened Cumae, hoping to take IN OTIA NAT AM PARTHENOPEN it for a refuge against the Romans who were pursuing them. Denys of Syracuse came to the relief of the Cumaeans, and the victory of 474 B. c. saved Parthen- ope. It is probable that the fertile Campania Felix on the shore of the bay retained many of the Syra- cusan warriors and attracted others from the popu- lous Ortygia. Parthenope outgrew the heights of Pizzofalcone, or was it on the hill of San Giovanni Maggiore, or on La Garola, the point of Posilipo? A new city, Neapolis, was built and the town of the Siren became merely the "old city," Palseopolis. Where was the Palaeopolis of Parthenope, on what ground lay Neapolis, are disputed questions to this day. Signor Salvatore di Giacomo, the Mistral of this Italian Provence, dialect poet, and scholar in ethnography and archaeology, as was the singer of Mireille, can help us no further than to suggest that perhaps the primitive city occupied the hill which rises from San Giovanni Maggiore toward the Duomo, while Neapolis may have lain around what is now the Old Market Mercato Vecchio. The space seems to me restricted for two cities. If, however, in order to keep your imagina- tion in harmony with Livy, you prefer to think of the two as separate cities, you might accept the theory of those who place Palaeopolis at the foot of the hill of Capodimonte. We still see there immense quarries which were once utilized as catacombs and whose size A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES recalls the Latomia. Parthenopseans and Syracusans must have retained from their common fatherland, Greece, this manner of cutting the rock to take out stone wanted for their buildings. But the settling of the questions of those early sites involves the solution of deep problems, dependent upon customs too little understood at this remote day. It is possible to ap- proach many probabilities without being able to see them in the form of truth. We may even, without ruffling our desire for exactitude, set Neapolis upon and beside the ruins of the old city. The different names served to flatter the new colonists. We must not forget that there was a Neapolis at Syracuse, and we may believe that the children of Achradina did not wish to be mistaken for the discomfited citizens whom they had saved from the Etruscans. Can we not judge what part they played in Neapolis by the medal struck in 474 to commemorate the peace between Athens and Syracuse? Alone, the Syracusans might attain a success such as any other people, especially Greeks, could not dream of reaching. So, we may be sure, Parthenope-Palaeopolis-Neapolis prospered on the eastern shore of the gulf, and if, as sang Villon, De tres beau parler tiennent chaires, Ce dit on, les Napolitaines, we may be sure that, in spite of science, Naples in- herits the Siren. Author A Street in Naples Sant' Elmo in the Background Primoli A House in Naples Alinari Castel dell' Ovo Alinari Strada Santa Lucia and the Pizzofalcone IN OTIA NAT AM PARTHENOPEN 23 Rome was not slow to cast eyes upon this happy land, so full of profound associations : the land where Tarquin sought refuge, where ^Eneas had landed, where Ulysses had amused himself. The climate had attracted many a Roman to this bay long before Augustus organized Naples into a city. Lucullus was installed on Pizzofalcone and on Megaris, the island which then bore the name of the wife of Hercules, and today is called, for the supposedly egg-shaped castle that covers it, the Castel dell' Ovo. The coast was sprinkled with villas, and we shall find that the Romans were already at Baia. It was Greece, which had been lost for love, that Rome came to seek here; and notwithstanding the violence done her by the Romans, Greece still lived here triumphant. On the fall of the Roman Empire, followed by that of the exarchate of Byzantium, Naples did not hesitate. She was faithful to the basileus, to the head of the Greek, the Eastern form of the Christ- ian Church. J If the day came when she tried to free 1 She fell under the Ostrogoths of Totila in the sixth century, was freed from them once by Belisarius, and, although recaptured and held for eleven years, was retaken to the mother heart by the great Nares, general and afterward Exarch, in 553, remaining a part of the Eastern Empire until the menace of the Lombards warned her to look out for herself. With a doge or duca, she long maintained her independence without abandoning the Eastern Church. H. G. 24 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES herself from her basileus, that last tie to the East, it was only by reason of the same impulse that compelled all the cities of the Italian peninsula to create an inde- pendent life, in no way forgetting her attachment to the one or the other of her ancestors. Towards the beginning of the eighth century, when Naples became a recognized duchy, there was, however, a new power to be reckoned with : the Western Church, abandoned by the emperors in their flight to Byzantium, had raised her head and the papacy of Rome had become grasping and suspicious. The Pope had grown anxious about those Neapolitan Greeks still under the spiritual rule of Byzantium. The Duke of Naples, then Stephen II., following the example set by his pre- decessor, Sergius, who had brought his career to a cul- mination in similar manner, had himself proclaimed Bishop, and going a step further, compelled the Pope to crown him. Rome was reduced to silence. How could she look with evil eye upon this monarchy whose monarch was a priest? To be sure, his dignity was Byzantine, but the Pope knew, as well as Stephen, that the chief use of the title was to intimidate the Lombard invaders, who had voracious appetites for the rich Campania. The Lombards came soon enough, camping at the gates of Naples, that is to say, at Benevento, at Capua, at Salerno. The basileus was far away and much occu- IN OTIA NATAM PARTHENOPEN 25 pied. So the Duke of Naples drew closer to the tute- lary pope who had already put Pepin and Charlemagne to the trouble of making him a kingdom. For almost a century Naples realized what had formerly existed at Jerusalem and what the Papacy was trying to impose upon the Italians: a sacerdotal kingdom. This State being Greek in its civil condi- tions and Roman in matters spiritual, Naples was then the only centre of Graeco-Latin culture remaining in the world. Her clergy was superior to all the others, mingling not only the two forms of the Christian re- ligion, but the geniuses of the two races. The Greek manuscripts which have survived for us we owe, in part, to the ambassadors of the Dukes of Naples to the basileus. They took advantage of the voyage to make copies of the original parchments afterwards destroyed by the Saracens. Beautiful and unhappy Naples of the ninth century! She wished to keep her personality and to lose nothing of the benefits acquired through her mental and economical development. She wished to remain Greek because Greece was the mother of all science and beauty ; she wished to be Latin since Rome had founded the existing society and laid down the law. So it was that she called upon those pirates of the Mediterranean shores, the Saracens, to aid her in maintaining her liberty because she wished to preserve her body and her mind, abandoned as she was by the 26 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES powerless basileus and by the too grasping Pope in the hour when she was threatened by the Lombards. 1 The Duke at that moment was Sergius II. , the man for the crisis. He rallied Naples' ancient rival, Amain, to help her drive out the barbarian auxiliary who was repaying himself too freely for the aid furnished. The Saracen yielded, going off to Rome where he pillaged St. Peter's. Then Sergius's son hastened to the aid of Leo IV., and Naples assumed the command of a league against the barbarians. But, Southern Italy, disem- barrassed of the Saracens, merely offered a freer field to the Lombard ambitions. The basileus was uneasy ; so he smiled a little on the Lombards. At that Ser- gius II. and his uncle Athanasius, Bishop of Naples, recalled the Saracens. The Pope soon persuaded Athanasius that to Naples, Lombards, basileus, and Saracens were but different names for the same thing, so Greeks and Romans united with the Lombards against the barbarians, and the victory of 915 practi- cally drove the Saracens out of Italy for ever. In the midst of all these combinations and competi- 1 The Lombards had long been seated at Benevento, having conquered that important Roman colony at the junction of the Appian Way and four other Roman roads (one connecting Naples with a large part of Italy). After the fall of the Lombards' Kingdom of Pavia in the eighth century, they made this duchy into a principality, practically a kingdom which dominated most of Southern Italy. H. G. IN OTIA NAT AM PARTHENOPEN 27 tions, however, the Lombards had continued their miserable course, although with small profit. Naples still attracted them and Naples was still looking about her to see in whom she could find help to protect her- self against them. In 1028 another Neapolitan Duke Sergius found nothing better to do than to call upon some of those Normans who had suddenly appeared in Southern Italy and distinguished themselves at Bari by the side of Melo, the leader of the revolt in which the Greeks of that city threw off the yoke of the Saracens and all the dominion of Byzantium. Sergius gave his sister in marriage to Rainulf the Norman and made him Count of Aversa so that he and his Normans made that castle a bulwark against the invasion of Naples from the North. Let the Lombards look out now! The Lombards did give up, not to the Normans of Aversa, but under the blows of those greater Normans of the Hauteville family and the magic name of Robert Guiscard, whose adventures unfold before our eyes in the Apulia and the Campania. A century later the walls of Naples were taken by assault by the great Robert's nephew, Roger II., Count of Sicily. 2 In 1 Little Cities of Italy, vol. iii. (in preparation). 2 A few lines from the none too familiar pages of this history may aid the reader whose wide knowledge M. Maurel takes for granted. "In 1038, the oldest three of the twelve sons of Tancred the 28 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES 1139, Naples became the capital of the Two Sicilies, a beautiful kingdom which was to be lost to France by the stupidity of an Angevin and which the ignominy of a Bourbon would impel to give itself to Italy. Norman lord of the castle Hauteville-le-Guichard (about eight miles north-east of Coutances) first appeared in Italy with at most five hundred men to assist the Greeks of Calabria to attack the Saracens of Sicily. So great was their prowess that they soon became counts and were fighting their own battles. Other brothers came out to share their increasing power, among them Robert to whom another Norman lord, Girard di Buon Albergo, gave the name of Guiscard (the wily), it is said, but may it not have been merely the name of the paternal castle, Hauteville-le- Guichard? In 1090, the youngest brother, Roger, was established as Count over Sicily, won from the Saracens and from their con- querors, whom the Normans had aided, the Greeks. The other brothers and their descendants, doughty warriors of their day, have faded from the pages of history, but Roger and his line ruled in this region for many generations, as Normans, as Germans, as Spaniards. His oldest son Tancred was the crusader, hero of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered. His second son Roger II. united the Norman conquests on the peninsula, including his own con- quest of Naples, with those of his island and, at his capital Paler- mo, in 1130, he had himself crowned King of the Two Sicilies, as he styled his more than double realm. He was succeeded by his second son, William 'the Bad,' who was followed by his son, William ' the Good' (so characterized, both of them, in the monk- ish records), who, dying in 1189, left the Two Sicilies to his natural son Tancred. He was succeeded by his son William III., the last Hauteville on the throne. This last William 's great aunt, Roger II. 's daughter Costanza d'Hauteville, or d'Altavilla, as the old Norman name had become Italianized, had married Henry VI., son of Barbarossa, and, when the second William died, the Emperor declared that Tancred, being a natural son, was not heir to the throne, but Costanza, or her husband, Henry was. The IN OTIA NAT AM PARTHENOPEN 29 Through all her vicissitudes, however, Naples has kept the soul of her fathers. It was she who held the torch of the antique which Frederick II. seized with such intoxication, placing it in the hands of his dear Manfred who passed it on to us of modern times. When we talk of our civilization, we should never Sicilians preferred Tancred, however, and he resisted successfully; but his son William III. was overcome by Costanza 's husband who, by that time, was the Emperor Henry VI. That was in 1 194 and the beginning of actual rule by the Germans, who had often come down here and long coveted power in this rich land without masters to preserve it from the soldiers of fortune of all races. Henry died three years later, leaving his thrones to his son Fred- erick, so that it may almost be said that the first of the strong and celebrated Hohenstaufen rulers of Naples and Sicily was the grandson of Norman Roger II. who was the Emperor Frederick II. of Germany, King Frederick I. of the Two Sicilies. The subse- quent history of Naples and its neighbours hangs upon a peg driven into it by Costanza the Norman princess. Her German son was not too welcome to his mixed Norman, Latin, and Greek subjects, not to mention all the blood that ran in the two king- doms, and to obtain the support of the Pope's condottieri (by this time become another power in the land), she agreed to the papal claim that the kingdom be recognized as a fief of the Church. Frederick's crusades and his quarrels with the Pope, engrossing as they were at times, did not prevent him from winning over the hostility of his Norman kingdom to a German ruler, nor did his popularity and the aid of his wife, Costanza, daughter of the King of Aragon, the world renowned brilliancy of his court at Palermo, his schools and universities there, and his own poetry in the Sicilian dialect prevent his barons from rebellion both in Sicily and in Naples. In 1250, he left his troubles and his vast dominion to his son, Conrad IV. of Germany, Emperor of the Romans, King of Jerusalem and the Two Sicilies. The last realm of this mighty 30 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES forget how much of it we owe to Naples. Poor as we find her now, let us always remember the centuries of her Greek culture that rolled away between the fall of the Empire and the arrival of the Normans. The sacred fire was very low but Naples kept it smoulder- ing, pious and wilful vestal that she was. Do you see those two Corinthian columns in the middle of the facade at the top of the steps of the church of San Paolo? Look at them tenderly: all that is left of the Greek Naples to which we owe so much. Sergius crushed the Saracen at the Garigliano ; Byzantium could not resist against the son of Moham- list Conrad handed over, with its papal quarrels, to the regency of his half-brother, Frederick's natural son, the great Manfred. On Conrad's death, the regency continued unbroken for his son Con- radin, and Manfred was so popular that upon a false rumour of the boy's death he was proclaimed and crowned King of the Two Sicilies at Palermo, for which Urban IV. excommunicated him anyway he had even marched into the papal territory, to say nothing of having made himself master of Tuscany and called upon the King of France to send his brother Charles of Anjou to humble him. This, indeed, Charles did at the battle of Bene- vento in 1266, when Manfred was killed, and Charles, invested in the Hohenstaufen's place with all honour by Clement IV., thought to make assurance doubly sure by causing the young Conradin to be put to death in 1268. Fourteen years later, how- ever, that murder was avenged by the massacre of the Sicilian Vespers, and the Sicilians, aided by the interests of the papacy against the growth of Angevin power in Italy, forced Charles to retire to the kingdom of Naples, leaving the island to the heir of the Norman conquerors as represented by the German Manfred's Spanish son-in-law Pedro III. de Aragon. H. G. IN OTIA NATAM PARTHENOPEN 31 med. In the Roman Forum the Temple of Castor and Pollux perpetuates the souvenir of the Dioscuri who saved Latinity upon the shores of Lake Regillus. Those same Dioscuri had their temple at Naples also, and these columns are all that remains of it. The brothers of Helen maintained Hellenism in the land where Leo IV. became reconciled with Duke Sergius and his uncle the Greek bishop. Even if the Naples of today had not the natural classic splendour that we are to become intimately acquainted with in our fortnight's visit, still, for this souvenir of Castor and Pollux alone, she would be worthy of our piety pity one might say, in thinking of the ages upon which we are about to enter. Second Day THE FAILURE OF THE GOTHIC Angevin Naples E who asks of his travels only impres- sions of pure beauty in art will not be detained long at Naples. The Mu- seum, to be sure, is large and so full of treasures that you may pass weeks in it, finding new beauties there every day. The Museum excepted, however, the buildings and other works scattered about the city fill you with disappointment and wrath. In the seventeenth century, a veritable cyclone of Spanish rage swept over what was then a beautiful capital, although Naples never equalled her 32 THE FAILURE OF THE GOTHIC 33 gorgeous sisters, Florence and Venice. To attribute to the Spaniards a set purpose to debase this foreign city, fallen by inheritance under their power, merely for the object of strengthening their hold upon it would be unjust. It is no longer pardonable to follow blind instinct, or race antipathy, in such matters. More safely, might we admit the deliberately laid plan of the artists in possession of Naples in that same seven- teenth century who, led by Ribera (Lo Spagnoletto, the Little Spaniard, as he was called) , undertook, or at any rate accepted, the task of effacing the past under their own work. Even if of inferior artistic merit, an ancient building deserves respect when it represents an epoch with sincerity. It must be acknowledged that in destroying the Gothic of Naples, the Baroque committed a national mistake, far as was that art of the Angevins from possessing any traits that could be called Neapolitan in character. Artists and viceroys we shall meet again and we shall know them well enough to see some of the profound reasons that underlay their actions ; but never can we overcome the first impression received from the monu- ments of Naples in the three great plastic arts. Seized with the nausea of the ubiquitous Baroque, the traveller can think of nothing but flight, forgetting that it may be worth the trouble to seek the consolation of a few pearls in this mass of trash. There are jewels of 34 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES price here, and it is the duty of the narrator to show them. I will not ask you to approach each heap and scratch until we find a treasure. Is it not better to have each work of art systematically separate from its surround- ings and placed in the modest box of this little book, where it will be seen, at least, even if it shines with feeble lustre? Research and presentation demand a certain amount of method and order. The plan of seeing Naples in the strictest historical order, which forces itself upon me, is not that usually followed by travellers. My justification is that history being the essential nail upon which to hang both works and ideas, it is neces- sary, if not to see Naples, certainly to remember it and to talk of it, that we follow its course across the cen- turies. The Greek landscape, so closely allied to the foundation of the city, has already lured us into this form. The prologue gives the tone of the work. Since there remain but two columns of the Greeks and but a wall of the Normans, our next question is, what is left of the Angevin occupation? Then, of the Ara- gonese? When we have seen we shall arrive quite naturally at the Naples of the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries, at the times of the Spanish viceroys, which we can see without repetitions at every step that would drag through a detailed study of the worst, THE FAILURE OF THE GOTHIC 35 the most mercantile art that has ever sullied the earth. Clearness and justice will thus be satisfied. Here, more than in any other city of Italy, we find the politi- cal and social events inseparable from their artistic evidence, and if this book is the first to describe the art of Naples in following the times instead of obeying the imperious caprice of the road we may be able to obtain an extra benefit from this systematic disorder. From the day of Belisarius to the day of Garibaldi, the Porta Capuana has been the principal entrance to the city not a sea gate, but the land entrance, at the south-eastern corner of the Angevin city. All the con- querors, all the kings, and all the armies have passed through it either to take the city or to proclaim their victories. At first but a simple opening in the wall, in 1485, under the Aragonians, it took the aspect it has today, except in decorations which date from the time of the first viceroys. Did its surroundings differ greatly from those we see? The church of Santa Catarina a Formello was not there, and the Strada Carbonara did not enjoy its present amplitude. But the sellers of small and old wares who keep in the sha- dows of the towers, the permanent market established in the gutter, the swarms of ragged people who come here to look for their sustenance, composed of all the left-overs of sea and field, all these are the same as of old. It is here that, with purse in hand, the cittadino meets the contadino, who has brought his full basket down from the mountains or across some part of the bay. The Norman kings, Roger, the German Conrad, Charles d'Anjou, Alfonso of Aragon, even our King Charles VIII., knew the Capuana much as we know it, that is, speaking of atmosphere rather than of strict lines. Except the Rogers of Sicily, all the kings who en- tered Naples by the Porta Capuana, of course saw rising before them the smooth walls of Castel Capuano. We are told that the castle we see, now called La Vicaria, was begun by King William I., son of Roger II., and completed by Frederick II. in 1231, and that until the time of Ferdinand I. of Aragon it was the residence, at least officially, of the kings. In 1540 the Viceroy, Don Pedro de Toledo, abandoned the castle completely as a residence, installing in it the Courts of Justice to which it is still dedicated. We may look through it in vain for trace of Norman or Angevin art. The great, square building of one storey perched upon two entresols has the appearance of a barrack, a true expression of the times of William and of Charles. We no longer see a guard in the porticoed courtyard, yet there does not seem so great a differ- ence as we might expect between the people moving about in it and the men who once pressed about the THE FAILURE OF THE GOTHIC 37 soldiers and swarmed the kitchens of Frederick II., of Conrad, and of the Angevins. The Neapolitans of today remember too well the heroism and the vil- lainy of the old days not to retain some resemblance to their ancestors. The salvation of this relic of the thirteenth century has been that no art presided over its development. Merely a useful building, it has not excited the jealousy of succeeding dynasties eager to destroy everything of which they were not the authors, nor has it excited the hatred of artists anxious to show that they could do something as meritorious as the work of their predecessors. From the main facade of the Castel Capuano to the Toledo runs what is now the broad Strada de' Tribu- nali. It is one of the most ancient streets of Naples, and, like Rettifilo, now merged in the Corso Umberto I., and the Strada San Biagio, it is an artery of the Angevin city. About all of the thirteenth-century capital lies within well-defined boundaries. On the east, the line runs from the Capuana to the Old Market and the quays; on the north, from the Capuana, partly by way of the ancient Strada San Giovanni a Car- bonara, to the upper end of the Toledo (which, how- ever, was made by Don Pedro and still defies its new name of Via Roma), ending somewhere near where now stands the Museum. On the west, the line follows the length of that same Toledo, under the lee of the densely 3 8 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES built-up hill of San Elmo, past the site of the Royal Palace, built later by a Spanish viceroy, even to Pizzo- falcone and the island which Pliny called Megaris where William I. began the fort, finished by Frederick II. for his treasure, which was a residence of Charles I. and all the Angevin royalty, although the present Castel dell' Ovo, with its fancied resemblance to the form of an egg, is another monument to Don Pedro. Is it in deference to the memories it cherishes of those old times that the Strada de' Tribunali is the dirtiest of all Naples? There is a certain air of dis- tinction about it. Like the surroundings of the Porta Capuana, it cannot differ greatly from what it was as far back as the time of the Joans, and although the court no longer dashes through the alleys running to the sea, the Tribunali and San Biagio would suffer if rebuilt. When we think of ancient Naples and her great palaces with porticoes, courtyards, and triumph- al stairways the triumph of the goats today our thoughts turn to these holes in the Strada de' Tribu- nali. Between the two shops of a bookseller and a shoemaker, here is the little charcoal furnace of the woman who sells spiritosa or panzarotti, if notfragaglia. Fragaglia is what is left over, unsalable fragments and what not of fish, fried in oil. Spiritosa is composed of leeks sprinkled with vinegar, garlic, allspice, and pepper. As to panzarotti, you can have your choice THE FAILURE OF THE GOTHIC 39 of one made with artichoke, cauliflower, or anchovy. The Neapolitans crowd around, besiege the dirty slat- tern whose kettle is halfway out of the shop on the sidewalk where, also, her merchandise accumulates. Where else could it be? Her shop is a cave, narrow, black, where the freshest of cherries might as well be prunes. Farther on, the cobbler has brought his vamps to the edge of the gutter, like Hans Sachs in the theatre, and so has the housewife her wash tub. The carpenter flings his shavings about your feet, and the fruit dealer his wilted salads, which are laid to freshen in any moisture, sometimes in the puddles upon the pavement. From the court- yards come all the noises of intimate family life and out of the doors come a loitering sort, as well as animals and children. The small folk, almost nude, admire your trousers and on account of their ignor- ance, not impudence, must be as carefully watched as the dogs when you are in their neighbourhood. The women, in skirts and low-cut chemises, sit near their doors, sometimes working, always talking, singing, laughing, and threatening the urchins to make you believe that nothing less than a thrashing is in store for them, if you did not know that it is well understood on both sides that no chastisement can have the least effect as punishment on the young rascal who has grabbed a head of cabbage and bitten it. 40 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES No city in the world is so made for loitering as Naples. The Tribunal! and San Biagio offer more than any of the other streets, perhaps, to the traveller who is looking for things to astonish him, although he must not be too easily enraged. Near the middle of the Tribunali, on a small square opposite San Paolo's Corinthian columns and part of the architrave, which are all that remain of the Temple of Castor and Pollux, we are reminded of our errand to look for traces of the Angevin dynasty, the stamp of the Gothic. Here it is in the church of San Lorenzo which retains its primitive state more, perhaps, than any other in Naples. Was the architect a Frenchman or a Floren- tine pupil of Niccolo Pisano? Let us try to make peace between the old disputants, Burckhardt and Vasari, with the curious and plausible theory of M. Emile Bertaux upon the Apulian origin and, conse- quently, the Norman education of the great Pisan sculptor. Even if San Lorenzo was not the work of Niccol6, it is affirmed that he came to Naples in 1220 to work upon Castel Capuano and that he remained here ten years. At any rate, San Lorenzo is Gothic and has kept the traits of its youth in the door, the gallery of the interior, and the radiant chapels. The dukes of Durazzo are buried under its vaultings, sacrificed to the divers and insatiable appetites of Joan I., daughter of the wise Robert. Let us look THE FAILURE OF THE GOTHIC 41 carefully at the modest tomb of the little Maria of Durazzo, a sarcophagus representing the Virgin car- ried to heaven by two angels with an awkwardness that recalls our most touching monuments of the Middle Ages: only two lions with handles record the passage of the Lombards. It was here that Petrarch prayed and that Boccaccio met Fiammetta. The Ba- roque has been employed to efface such memories ; but who can stand in modern Naples and look without emotion at these walls, behind which sat, under the protection of Championnet, the first government of the Parthenopian Republic? At San Domenico the remains of Angevin days are still more scanty; and, after a few steps, here we are at Santa Chiara where the great shade of Robert the Wise might come forth from his noble tomb. In the matter of sculpture must we limit our findings in Angevin architecture to these two churches? Yet, if we consult the archives and set up a synoptical picture we shall dis- cover that all but about a dozen of the churches of Naples were of Angevin origin. Aragon, had other cares in the short sixty years she lived here, and has left us only the Incoronata and San Giovanni Battista. The two hundred and thirty years of the Spanish vice-roy- alty are marked by five temples only : Santa Catarina a Formello, San Paolo, the Gesu, the Gerolomini, and San Giacomo dei Spagnuoli. Charles III. signed his name 42 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES to two: San Severino and San Marcellino. Ferdi- nand put his mark on two also : the Carmini and San Francesco di Paola, the first at the beginning of his reign, the second at the end of his reign. All the other churches of Naples date from the Angevins. What has become of them ? Poor daughters of exiled fathers who wished by their beauty to recall their youthful days passed in the deep forests and under the deep snows. Newcomers stripped them of their severe garments, to dress them up again in gold and jewels. If it were not for a ribbon forgotten or some ne- glected ring the orphans would be unrecognizable: some arches at San Lorenzo and at San Domenico, at San Giovanni a Carbonara and at Sant' Angelo a Nilo, a door at San Giovanni Maggiore and at San Giovanni di Pappacoda, a marvellous Norman-Sicilian clock- tower a door also at the Duomo, an entire nave at San Pietro a Majella; but in Santa Chiara, the An- nunziata, Santa Maria Regina, Corpus Domini, and twenty others there is nothing to do but to renounce all hope of finding the fresh flowers of the Gothic which Charles of Anjou and his children strove to acclimate on the burning shores of the ancient Parthenope. It is a gloomy review we have made of these once beautiful aspirations in stone, and when we look at the tomb of Robert the Wise in Santa Chiara what regrets take possession of us! Oh, the Baroque was doubly THE FAILURE OF THE GOTHIC 43 sacrilegious here in Naples ! Yet must we not ask why the Gothic art which, arriving here in all its purity and attaining perfection, could not, after three centuries, inspire respect, hold its own, in a word, become na- tional? Because architecture is an art that is above all subject to the land where it nourishes, to its sky, to its flora, to its customs. Fog and sun, oaks and olives, the shut-in life and the life of the market-place are not suited to the same buildings. The Gothic characteristics could never be adapted to this country of sunshine, freedom, and nudity. Deplore as we must the savagery of the Baroque, let us not fail to understand that the Baroque was possible only be- cause Italy could not retain the Gothic, because it was too foreign to the country, opposed to the tempera- ment as to the atmosphere and climate. The spirit of the Italian genius is in the Renaissance as the Ger- manic genius is in the Romance. Gothic France was touched by the Renaissance also only because her skies share something of the two climates. In those years of the fourteenth century when Italy began to germinate, when Florence and Siena, among other cities, were preparing for the Quattrocento, Naples was incapable of producing a single really na- tional artist. Though she was Italian and tormented by the Greek atavism, nevertheless, when the Angevins wished to build, their churches were placed in the hands 44 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES of French or Tuscan architects, their tombs were sculp- tured and their chapels were painted by Florentines and Sienese. Those foreigners were good workmen who knew how to please the tastes of those who paid them, but the novices, descendants of the immigrants from Chalcis, infants scarcely awakened, did not know how to direct the adaptable artists who were filling their orders. The Gothic was to them an undecipherable enigma. What Naples of the Angevins saw in the Gothic was merely a ready-made art brought in by a conqueror who was not capable of thinking of any other. She was taught to speak a language that she could not under- stand. In creating a certain Masuccio, soon rein- forced by a second Masuccio without making him any the more secure, an effort was made to create a Nic- co!6 Pisano of the Parthenopaean gulf. All the works attributed to them have had to be recredited to their Florentine or Sienese authors. What does it matter anyway if Masuccio's work be Angevin? The Nea- politan inability is but the more glaring. Whether or not the tomb of Robert the Wise in Santa Chiara was made by the second Masuccio or by Sancius and Giovanni of Florence, it is Angevin, as are all of that time. The funeral monument, although ornamented with lace-work ogees, is of severity that appeals to us as unequalled, standing here in this Baroque ballroom, THE FAILURE OF THE GOTHIC 45 shining with its almost blinding brilliancy. The tomb rests under a carved arch supported by two columns, each made into three stages of niches filled by statues. Below, the king lies guarded by angels; above, the king is seated in a costume that reminds us of the emperors and the Normans of Palermo ; still higher is the Virgin with Saint Claire and Saint Fran- cis. The proud dignity of the king is indescribable. The face, ruined as it is by time, has a majesty in the rude strength and innocence of the straightforward man of action to which the cleverest Nolas will never attain. Here, indeed, is the hallmark of the North- ern Gothic: the gravity of feature and gesture, the dignity of attitude. Life in the North is a serious matter; it has no room for either thoughtlessness or gaiety. Never in the world could a Neapolitan have conceived such a statue. And the Angevin would have believed himself damned if he had been inter- preted in Bernini's manner. From his tomb Robert must look with disapproving eye upon the row of cameos in front of the organ which was placed opposite his last resting place in 1345, the year of his death; it must make him tremble with indignation. Yet this work of the sculptor of the tomb, Giovanni da Firenze, and of a certain Pace, these bas-reliefs of the life of Saint Claire may be counted among the most charming productions in existence, and nothing is more impec- cable, more worthy of these disciples of Giovanni Pisano. In the freshness of spirit and of workman- ship, the sincerity and honesty which were the glory of the first Tuscans, I know of nothing more pleasing. The passage of the Angevins is marked by other mausoleums in Santa Chiara, in San Domenico, San Lorenzo, Santa Maria Regina, the Duomo, and Corpus Domini. To speak of the first and most perfect of them, that of Robert, is to speak of them all. And that is the supreme proof. Among all these works, standing out throughout the period of the fourteenth century, in honour of the Angevins and their most con- siderable servitors, not one differs materially from the others. In vain we look to Tino di Siena for some- thing that may distinguish him, a little more dry ness, anything, even a shortcoming. His monument of the Queen Maria in the Regina, those of Matilda d'Acaja and of the Duke Charles of Calabria in the Corpus are the good work of the good pupil of a good master, Giovanni Pisano. They are, above all, Angevin. One feels and sees everywhere the hand that guided the fingers that used the compass and square. The king is present, forbidding any glorification of himself other than such as was accorded his ancestors in the cathedrals of Provence or the Isle of France. To him Paradise itself was Gothic! No Angevin king could AHnari Monument of Robert the Wise, Church of Santa Chiara, Naples Alinari Detail of the Above 48 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES a mighty fusion of Angevin Gothic and Florentine Renaissance. If Joan II. had not carried away the Angevin spirit into her tomb, who can tell into what new form Andreas' effort might have led it? Our natural liking for the Gothic excuses the dream in which reason forbids us to believe. With all there is to be said of its failure, afore doomed, we must be touched by Naples' desire to boast an art of her own. Alas, there was no Ciccione, to whom Ser Gianni Caracciolo's tomb was so long attributed, as there was no Masuccio. At least was there not a Zingaro ? Without him Neapolitan paint- ing under Anjou and Aragon will be lost as Neapolitan sculpture has dissipated with the illusion of Masuccio. What a fragile base the life of one man of the fifteenth century upon which to build a school, that is to say, an artistic development necessarily accompanied by other prosperities, also absent here ! Even if authenti- cated works of Lo Zingaro should be found, they would hardly suffice to create a Neapolitan school of paint- ing of the fifteenth century. It is a strange phenome- non that Lo Zingaro had no posterity, for it would be an injustice to his memory to make him father of all the Ribera band. The most remarkable work signed by his name is seen at the ancient convent of San Sever- ino, today the depository of the Archives. Twenty fres- coes under the sombre cloisters represent the life of THE FAILURE OF THE GOTHIC 49 Saint Benedict. In spite of their ruined condition, it is incontestably the work of a Florentine hand we are looking at. We see it in the classic landscape of the Tuscans with the background of hills or of fine and elegant architecture standing upon rocks tinged with a blue light, and, above all, in the figures that move against this background, so alive, without stiffness as without vulgarity, faces with piercing eyes, half- mocking, half-severe, mouth disdainful and good at the same time, in short the physiognomy which makes the Florentine type the most disturbing, the most desperately difficult, one might say, of all schools. Who then, looking at these frescoes of San Severino, could talk of an Umbrian? The vigour and the di- versity we find here could not possibly be traced back to Perugino. And if we cannot allow the work to rest to the credit of the Donzelli brothers, whose frescoes, indeed, it resembles and whom the most fierce Zingar- ists will permit to come to the aid of their hero, then notwithstanding the Florentine type of features, we may as well join Signer Salvatore di Giacomo in attributing it to a Venetian. This is all of the pictorial that Naples can offer to scholar or traveller up to the end of the sixteenth century. Under Aragon and the so-called Flemish influence, we shall see her make an effort in other pictures, or, more strictly speaking, present some 4 5 o A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES canvases. That, too, was a movement that was sud- denly cut short. In painting, as in architecture and in sculpture, the arrival of the Baroque forced Naples to renounce any artistic brilliancy. Robert did all that he could for painting, as for all the arts, and it should have been the most flourishing of them all since the painters were not constrained by the King's fondness for the Gothic. The truth was that the Angevins had no personal ideal. We know to what depths painting fell in France in the thirteenth century. Robert called Giotto to Naples, giving him full liberty, yet, beyond his own work, he left no impression here. No one seems to have understood him, no one seems to have thought of following in his footsteps. The seventeenth century only appreciated him sufficiently to hasten to suppress the peril of comparison found in him in the Castello, in Santa Chiara, in the Regina, even in the Incoronata where, by a miracle, one chapel has survived. Is it his? Are the important remains in the Regina his, also, or are they, as M. Emile Ber- taux says, the work of a Sienese, or, according to Vasari, are they by Cavellini, a Roman contemporary of Giotto? It is risky to attribute works to a painter upon manner alone: such good pupils as Mazo and Trouillebert have deceived generations on Velasquez and Corot. The charter only is decisive. We have none touching the frescoes of the Incoronata, and the THE FAILURE OF THE GOTHIC 51 only ground upon which these frescoes can have been attributed to Giotto is that of the interest of the city of Naples in doing so, for the profit of its citizens. Look at the dates. The paintings of the Incoronata represent the wedding of Joan I. and Louis of Taranto which took place in 1345. Giotto died in 1337. But the church was not founded until 1352. If, however, we examine the bizarre position of the chapel contain- ing the frescoes, a sort of tribune badly placed and awkwardly built; and if one thinks that the palace, belonging, perhaps to Joan, surely to certain Angevins, was adjoining the church, it is easy to suppose that Giotto's chapel was a part of the palace and incor- porated into the church at a later day. The frescoes, then, may have been ordered by Robert to adorn the apartments of one of his children, and Joan may have been married under them. If so, we have only to explain why they should represent Joan's wedding. But these decorations treat of the seven sacraments, and it may be that posterity has given an importance and actuality to that of the marriage sacrament not intended by the painter. Joan may even have thought it clever to have the faces retouched, putting something of her own and Louis's likenesses in the fea- tures of the marrying couple. But is there any cer- tainty that any such resemblances exist? Petrarch, who was Robert's guest in 1343, speaks of these paint- 52 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES ings as Giotto's, bearing testimony to the side of the case which I have taken. But is there great need of making a case out of the matter? No one denies that Giotto visited Naples. It is not less certain that his visit left no fruitful result. With him or without him, the Gothic art could not flourish in the land where Donatello and Brunellesco had so many children. In place of enriching the land offered to it, it sterilized the country. The Northern art was poison to Southern Italy, paralyzing it at the very sources of its life. Strangers to the sky as to the traditions of the land wished to impose upon it their conception of the beautiful. They failed, as everyone fails who works against the genius of a race and a country. The ephemeral brilliancy, wonderful and excellent as it was, of the Normans in Sicily, shows conclusively that to be great and perfect is not enough to create a lasting power. The power must be first of all national, that is to say, it must be understood by those whose aspiration the power wishes to express, those whom it is asking to perpetuate it. Robert the Wise, son of Charles II., called the Lame, and grandson of Charles I. of Anjou and Provence, mounted the throne of Naples at the happiest moment in the history of that kingdom it was in the first de- cade of the fourteenth century. To be sure, his grand- THE FAILURE OF THE GOTHIC 53 father had been obliged to renounce a large part of his conquest of the splendid realm of the Two Sicilies. We remember that the Pope, when he asked Charles of Anjou, the warlike brother of the warrior saint, Louis IX. of France, to help him against the power- ful Germans, those Hohenstaufens who had inherited the Sicilies of the old Norman crusaders, had no in- tention of rewarding the aid he received by making an equally powerful French dominion out of the Angevin conquest. Charles had had no choice but to remain barricaded in the Neapolitan country and to abandon Sicily to the conquered and (by his own murder of Conradin) the extinct Hohenstaufen's heir, Manfred's Spanish son-in-law, Pedro of Aragon. Thus restricted, the Angevins possessed just the power necessary to serve the Pope without troubling him. He could depend upon the Kingdom of Naples for the assistance indispensable to the conquest and defence of the realm that the Holy See was carving out for itself at that moment when all the sovereigns about it were despoiling, each for himself, the carcass of the Roman Empire of the Occident. The hardness of the times, however, compelled the Pope to bind himself to the Angevin perhaps more than he wished to ; and when necessity drove the papacy to abandon Rome, it sought the shelter of Provencal Avignon offered by Charles II. of Naples, Anjou, and Provence. Naples, 54 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES as protector of the Pope, his host in France, his bul- wark in Italy, gained a prestige that was without second, becoming all powerful in the Peninsula and extending its influence throughout all Christianity. The Pope understood the situation perfectly. From Avignon he insists upon the Emperor Henry of Luxem- bourg crossing the Alps to give an eye to the way things were going, although the Angevin must be allowed to believe the field free to himself.. Matters stood thus when Charles the Lame died. The heir to his kingdom was his second son, Robert; but his eldest son, who was dead, had left a son, Charles Robert, Caroberto or Caribert. He had been called to the throne of Hungary, being the grand-nephew on his mother's side of one of the last kings of that country, besides heir of his father who was, for a moment, thanks to his marriage, King of the Magyars. Cari- bert had only to obtain the throne of Naples to have an empire ready made to his hand. What Germanic feudal council would dare to refuse to elect as Emperor the King of Hungary and Naples and protector of the Pope? Caribert thereupon laid claim to the succes- sion to Naples; and the Pope followed the quarrel with the liveliest interest, knowing that whoever should be the conqueror, Henry of Luxembourg, Robert, or Caribert, he would have to ask for all the prestige the Church could bestow. THE FAILURE OF THE GOTHIC 55 The descent of Henry of Luxembourg into Italy, however, was unfortunate for the papacy, since it re- sulted in drawing about Robert, all the Guelphs, who had been somewhat scattered and out of joint since the exodus of the papacy. That son of a foreign race be- came the champion of Italian rights; Robert, that Ghibelline by definition, became the arbiter of the Guelphs. And Avignon looked on with satisfaction while Robert worked for the return to power. The successors of Innocent III. had kept the attitude taken by that Pope against Frederick II. If some of them, like Clement V. of Avignon, had appealed for aid to the Emperor, it was as an expedient, not through change of policy. No longer was empire the immut- able formula. The Kingdom of Naples was the guar- antee of the division of the Roman Empire, therefore the guarantee of the temporal domain of the papacy. The cities of Italy, also, independent since the Treaty of Constance, had no more interest than the Pope in the reconstruction of the Empire. So, Robert, King of Naples, suddenly found himself in a situation to which his activities had hitherto been stranger and let us recognize that he must have kept a wonderful equilibrium in the course of the thirty-three years of his reign, during which he must have had to serve the Pope and distrust him, hold off the Emperor without exciting the Pope to send down upon him other ene- 56 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES mies; he must have had to protect Genoa against Milan while managing Milan which was inclined to disturb the indiscreet French; he had to sustain Castruccio against Florence without letting that ruin the Guelph capital, he installed the Duke of Athens as Podest of Florence without entirely crushing the city too much, and he kept his course clear amid all these ruses and intrigues, rounded out his kingdom, strengthened it, made it indisputably powerful. When he died, in 1343, at the age of eighty years, Robert could render his testimony of having done well. Circumstances had aided him, no doubt, but he had known how to profit by them. He was not a great king, but a great politician. He was called the Wise and justly, if that word expresses ability rather than genius. Was he wise, however, when he married his grandchild Joan (daughter of his eldest son Charles the Illustrious, Duke of Calabria, who died young, and Marie de Valois) to Andrew of Hungary, son of Cari- bert ? It was to leave to his successors the problem he himself had run foul of in mounting the throne when Caribert came to dispute the paternal heritage. As Joan was his heir, Robert had thought only of keeping the throne in his family, perhaps of ending the old quarrel between the Hungarians and the Angevins in feeding them both with the same cake. But the pro- THE FAILURE OF THE GOTHIC 57 blem could not fail to cause anxiety to the Emperor as well as to the Pope. Joan was not slow in reassuring them both. Her husband, Andrew, had been seven years old when she married him. His rights to the Hungarian throne had been ceded to his brother Louis and he had been pro- claimed heir presumptive to the crown of Naples. When Robert died, Andrew gave his wife to under- stand that it was not as the husband of Queen Joan, but as king of the realm of his grandfather Charles the Lame, that he intended to be master. Joan claimed her sovereign rights from her father, and so the married couple contended, each for supremacy as if they were not both reigning together. Joan, in fact, was tired of the husband she had known from childhood and, while Andrew was occupied with efforts to secure his recognition by the Pope and to choose his emblem and standards a block and an axe, Joan ornamented her pennons with acts of kindness. Generous of her fa- vours to all who flocked around her, if only they would help her rid herself of her husband, she was able to form an entire regiment of her own which was com- manded by her cousin, Louis of Taranto, chief lover, to whose eyes Joan held up the crown. Sacha, Robert's widow, soon withdrew from this infamous court, and a few months after Robert's death, Andrew was drawn into ambush at Aversa. Someone came to 5 8 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES call him in the middle of the night while he was sleep- ing beside Joan, and she, seized with scruples all of a sudden, tried to prevent him from rising, but her weak- ness passed and she allowed him to go into the next room where assassins fell upon him and threw him out of a window. But Yseult, Andrew's old nurse, who had been watching, saw the drama, ran out of the castle shouting and calling up the whole city. Men jumped out of bed to seize their arms, forming two parties, one led by the cousins and compatriots of the King, the other marshalled by the lovers of the Queen, who were waiting for the quarry. Naturally the affair was one to be investigated: justice should be done; guilt should be punished. Clement VI. undertook the matter with precaution. If Joan were dethroned, Naples would revert to An- drew's brother, King Louis of Hungary, and there would be the question of the Empire opened again. It would be well to interrogate the accomplices to the plot in such a manner that they should not say too much. In fact those who showed themselves so cow- ardly as to talk when they were questioned had their mouths shut with fishhooks. Yseult 's cries, however, were heard as far as Hun- gary, reminding Louis that he, too, was a grandson of the Angevin King Charles the Lame. He started at once for Italy, while Joan was marrying her cousin THE FAILURE OF THE GOTHIC 59 Louis of Taranto, and he entered Benevento the nth of January, 1348, not without having politely declined the interference of envoys of the Pope who were on hand to stop him. Joan had hastily gone to Avignon six days before. Louis went to Aversa to see the scene of the crime, and his indignation was such that he must have someone to punish at once. There was Charles of Durazzo, possible heir to the throne, since he, too, was a grandson of Charles II. therefore Louis's cousin as well as Joan's cousin and brother-in-law, by her second marriage. Durazzo had no part whatever in the assassination, but a victim was wanted without de- lay, and so much the better if expiation and precaution were two birds that could be hit by the same stone. So Durazzo was killed. A child of Andrew's was there too, but he was in swaddling clothes. A babe in arms could not be accused of killing his father, so Louis contented himself with sending him to Hungary in the care of Yseult, no doubt. Everything went like magic, and if it had not been for the plague, perhaps Hungary and Naples would have scoffed at geography in making one domain. But the plague came and Louis was more afraid of it than he had been of Charles of Durazzo. Since he could not rid himself of it so easily, he ran to Barletta where he embarked, leaving a few battalions of his troops which if spared by the epidemic might be useful to him later. 60 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES Joan, seeing Louis's departure from the safe distance of her retreat, felt no anxiety herself over the fever. The Pope furnished her the means to return as the price of her renunciation of her rights to Avignon; and the Hungarians, meantime, sacked her kingdom, steal- ing, violating, burning everything everywhere. Plagues do not last forever and, in 1350, Louis re- turned. His Hungarians cried to be allowed to go home since there was nothing more to pillage and he consented upon condition that an honourable ex- pedient be furnished him. The Pope thought about it and offered his intervention. He declared that Joan, in killing her husband, had been the victim of witch- craft, the irresponsible instrument of Satan, and he proclaimed Joan and her husband Louis of Taranto the sovereigns of Naples. Louis of Hungary said ' ' Amen' ' and regained his Carpathians with philosophy. The carnival began again and continued until twenty-six years later, when Joan, then living with her fourth husband, Otho of Brunswick, was obliged, by reason of her age, to give up hope or pretension of having an heir to the throne. Andrew's son was dead long since, the Hungarian climate being unfavourable to Neapolitans. To whom should the realm go after Joan? A candidate was brought forth furnished with all necessary rights, if not titles: it was another Charles of Durazzo, son of the innocent victim of Louis of THE FAILURE OF THE GOTHIC 61 Hungary's mighty vengeance. He was the last Angevin, belonging both to Naples and to Hungary. Educated at the court of Budapest, he had been nourished in disdain of Joan; and when Urban VI. toward whom Joan never showed herself too docile invited him to take possession of his heritage before it was vacant, Charles did not blush with scruples. Joan, seeing that she was likely to be hard pressed by this cousin of Durazzo and looking about her for help, called upon a brother of Charles V. of France, as, long before, the Pope had called upon a brother of Saint Louis, their common ancestor. That brother of Charles V. was also a Count of Anjou, though hardly of the first family of that name. Joan, daughter of Marie de Valois, could, however, call him cousin. Louis d' Anjou accepted the proposition to become Joan's son, and he hastened to Italy with an ardour that was something more than filial towards his new mother. It seemed to him so unnecessary to wait for her death to become king that he broke his journey at Rome to have himself crowned, negotiating the matter with the gift of some abandoned fiefs to the nephew of Urban VI., and then marched upon the Queen in her capital of his kingdom. Joan was without money, without soldiers, without husband, for Otho retired precipitately to Aversa, and her people were worn out with her almost forty years of excesses. She shut her- 62 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES self up in the Castel dell' Ovo the I5th of July, 1381, but capitulated after six weeks. Not, however, to Anjou. Charles of Durazzo had lost no time in com- ing upon the scene of the tottering throne. He sent Joan to the Castello del Muro in the province of Basili- cata, where, ten months later, as she seemed little in- clined to die of her own accord, he had her smothered under pillows. So came to her end in her bed, at the age of fifty, one of the most generous daughters of man ever favoured by royal crown. Who should succeed her, Charles of Durazzo or Louis of Anjou? Charles avoided combat, letting the Angevin army melt away from that unnatural son their leader until Louis of Anjou himself died at Bari. The Pope, who could allow matters to take their course when there were two disputants to the throne, now aroused himself to encourage the partisans left on the side of the Angevins, then came himself to direct operations, perhaps? No, but because of his tender- ness for his own nephew, Butillo, who challenges the attention of all the Neapolitans anxious to have a master who showed how much of a man he was by violating all women in religious orders whom he came across. The Pope sighed when complaint of such conduct was carried to him, and murmured, "It is the fire of youth!" Charles of Durazzo pressed the THE FAILURE OF THE GOTHIC 63 indulgent Pope as hard as he could, until at length he had him under siege in the Castello di Nocera, His Eminence obstinately refusing to come out of it be- cause he had promised it to Butillo. But, not wish- ing to stay in it the rest of his life, he called upon the Genoese to come to his aid. They delivered him from his enemy by carrying him away, leaving Charles III. of Naples victor on the field. It was a field so gone to rack and ruin, however, that it did not seem worth having after all, and, when, on the I4th of September, 1385, an embassy arrived from Hungary begging him to rescue the crown of that realm which had fallen to the female line and upon the head of a certain Marie, daughter of old Louis, Charles, leaving Naples to the regency of his wife Marguerite, set out for Hungary where, in less than a year after his arrival, he was as- sassinated by that certain Marie and her mother. The widow of Charles III. governed the Kingdom of Naples as regent in the name of her son Ladislaus, ten years old, with a covetous nobility gathered around them. Another faction formed around the son of Louis of Anjou whom some even proclaimed as Louis II. And as Naples had two kings, so had Rome two popes. The two parties fought, mingled, and fell apart, passing from one king to the other according to the gifts and promises received from them. And the popes shifted in like manner. It seemed, however, 64 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES that Ladislaus offered the better guarantee to the Neapolitan barons, as he grew in ardour, in duplicity, and in audacity. When he was fourteen years old, in 1389, he married Constance of Clermont, daughter of a Sicilian, beautiful, rich, good, and in love with her husband. Ladislaus, however, soon decided that he might make a more profitable alliance, obtained from one of the two popes an annulment of the marriage, and one Sunday morning, after Mass, Constance, without forewarning, heard the Bishop of Gaeta read the bull of divorce. She was thrown into the depths of a castle from which, three years later, she was dragged to the altar and married to Andrew of Capua ; throwing herself upon the steps, Constance cried: "Count Andrew, you may consider yourself the most fortunate knight of the kingdom; you are going to have for your mistress the legitimate wife of your King!" Ladislaus, who married Marie of Cypress, continued to defend his property with so much skill and in so many details that we must give up the task of follow- ing him. Sometimes he was with the Pope at Avignon, sometimes in Rome, sometimes he was alone; always alert for his interests at the moment, according to the attitude of Louis of Anjou, or yielding to his caprice which led him, one day, to make a trip to Rome with his army from whence he set forth on his conquest of THE FAILURE OF THE GOTHIC 65 the pontifical domain. He tried to constrain Flor- ence into recognizing him as master. Florence refused to do so. "What troops have you to oppose me?" Ladislaus asked. "Your own!" replied Valori. That admirable answer contained all the philosophy of those senseless wars. Ladislaus drew back in fear of the Florentine gold, but Florence called Louis II. of Anjou whom the Council of Pisa invested with the rights and title of King of Naples. The Pope, to curry favour with the Pretender, and, also, because it cost him nothing, added Sicily to the kingdom. Louis, however, found it necessary to retire to Provence to recruit troops in order to effect his occupation of the lands given him. His army was ready in 1411, need- ing only to be paid. But the Florentines, to whom he turned, were tired of the eternal role of the milch cow which they had been playing so long, for in the fif- teenth century Florence was the great cashier of Eu- rope. They preferred to make peace with Ladislaus, and Louis returned to Provence, never again venturing to Italy. Reconciliations being in order, Ladislaus made peace with the Pope. Three months later, he again threw himself upon Rome, repeated his menace against Florence, and renewed his conquest of the patrimony. Perhaps he would have shown the world what a prince could make for himself out of the great schism, if he s 66 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES had carried himself with a little more spirit, or if he had not died suddenly, the first known victim of the "Neapolitan fever." His exploits aside, is not that demise enough to yield to Ladislaus a place in history? His sole heir was his sister Joan, widow of the Duke of Austria. Forty-five years of age when the crown fell to her, Joan was then giving all her favours to a young man of twenty-five years, count, seneschal, camerlingo, not to mention other minor titles and pre- bends. Pandolfo Alopo was much at his ease in all his functions in spite of Jacques de Bourbon whom Joan married to protect her against a third Louis d'Anjou. By way of guarantee against the husband, Alopo tried to make use of a certain Sforza, who had been thrown into prison by Ladislaus. But they could not come to terms and Sforza returned to his cell. The husband triumphed, arrested Alopo, made him avow his relations with Joan, and killed him in ignominious torture. Joan was treated almost as severely and sequestered. Her fate aroused some compassion, and one holiday, the I3th of September, 1416, when she appeared before the populace, pale, emaciated, with the air of a martyr, there was a sud- den call to arms in her favour. Jacques sought refuge in the Castel dell' Ovo and was not released until he had restored his wife to power. The first use Joan made of her rights was to replace THE FAILURE OF THE GOTHIC 67 Alopo with Gianni Caraccioli, whose tomb we have seen in Carbonara. Caraccioli was a politician, keen to see that some degree of order must be put into the anarchy into which the court was plunged. He released Sforza, giving him Troia. He restored Rome to the Pope in exchange for Joan's coronation and he threw Jacques across the frontier, where he hid him- self in the Franciscan habit in which he died. But he was counting without his Sforza. Keener on venge- ance for his long imprisonment than on gratitude for his release, Sforza began at once to intrigue against Naples. He divined the desire of Pope Martin V. to provide a rich establishment for his nephew, Antonio Colonna on the one hand and, on the other, he called Louis III. d'Anjou to come, install himself at Aversa, and fight Joan and Caraccioli. Meantime Martin V. t playing the disinterested, offered to arbitrate while he excited Alfonso V. of Aragon and Sicily with his remarks about Joan, the childless queen, who surely would leave her kingdom to whatever gallant friend should aid her against Sforza and Anjou. "Look!" exclaimed the Holy Father, "by you and for you will be re-established at length the beautiful kingdom of the Two Sicilies, founded by the Normans from whom you are descended through Manfred." Joan, prevailed upon by Martin's counsels, adopts Alfonso, whereupon opens the great struggle be- 68 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES tween Aragon and Anjou. Caraccioli does not like the new son of his dear friend Joan and induces her to make a combination against him with Louis of Anjou. The Pope, too, changes sides, and even Sforza joins them, all for Louis III. Joan has her fortress, Alfon- so his, from which they spy on each other. Alfonso succeeds in taking Caraccioli, but Joan gives him the slip, thanks to Sforza who takes her to A versa. There she revokes her adoption of Alfonso in favour of Louis III., who, thinking himself necessary, becomes insolent. Caraccioli, a man of resources, offers his support to Alfonso, who, from Castile whither he has been called meantime, sends out his brother Dom Pedro. The seesaw is now tipped in favour of Caraccioli, who, for his own part, is tired of his old mistress, now sixty years of age. He deceives her outrageously and is assassinated at her orders on the 1 7th of August, 1432. Was all that helping the affairs of Louis III.? Caraccioli had exiled him to Cosenza, and the favour- ites who surrounded Joan II., though, perhaps not too indulgent toward all the old Queen might desire, had no wish to see Louis return amongst them. To keep him occupied, they sent him to make war on Orsini and he died at once in the course of his march on the 1 4th of November, 1434. Some months later, Joan, too, breathed her last, and, upon opening her will, it THE FAILURE OF THE GOTHIC 69 was found that she left her kingdom to Ren6 d'Anjou, Louis's brother. Was Alfonso of Aragon going to allow himself to be ousted in that manner? We shall soon see. TKird Day THE FAILURE OF THE RENAISSANCE: Aragfonian Naples the hill against which stands the old University, and whose culminating point is the convent of San Marcellino, between San Giovanni Maggiore and Capuano, Angevine Naples weaves the network of its little streets, chief of which is the Strada de'Tribunali. From this earlier base, Aragonian 70 THE FAILURE OF THE RENAISSANCE 71 Naples extends towards the east and the south, that is to say, it descends the hill and stretches along the sea, where the Castel Nuovo forms its centre. If we wish to know more of the differences that existed between Palaeopolis and Neapolis, perhaps the changes in Naples of the fifteenth century will give us a fair idea of them. Castel Nuovo is not purely Aragonian. It had been built by Charles I. of Anjou, between 12 70 and 1280, and served as an advance fortress, guarding the sea. Robert utilized it for his entertainments. Giotto decorated it. Petrarch was crowned there. The Angevin royal residence, however, the centre of life, was at Capuano. It was only under Aragon that Cas- tel Nuovo became the royal castle, replaced, in 1600, by the present royal palace, work of Fontana, the Count de Lemos then being Viceroy. Then, when Alfonso of Aragon had at last suc- ceeded in conquering the realm of his Norman ances- tors, and of his foster-mother Jeanne II., his first care was to guarantee the freedom of the sea. Sicily and Spain were far too useful to him for him to neglect this precaution. From 1442 until 1458 Castel Nuovo was altered, much enlarged, and decorated. We may inquire what remains of the original plan, the work of the two Frenchmen, Pierre de Chaul and Angicourt all the external structure, perhaps, which is after the 72 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES manner of the fortified chateaux of the north, with towers and bastions. Alfonso found a strong fortress which progress in the art of war had not yet rendered useless. He could and did modify certain parts of it only, in keeping with the demands of its enlarged pur- pose. In any event, as it was in the fifteenth century so it appears today. The proof of this is found in a picture of the Florentine school, a picture often copied. It shows the arrival of Laurent de Medicis at Naples, in 1479. Behind the fortified harbour, the round towers and flat walls today surround a great square, and border on the garden of the royal palace. The soldiers of the King of Savoy are quartered there. Without taxing the imagination, one can easily picture this fortress. As it is today, in its disorder and filth, it presents little contrast to its condition of other days. One wing is occupied by the chapel of Santa Barbara. Above the door of this chapel stands an image of the Virgin, said to have been chiselled by Laurana. Most probably it was he, too, who wrought the Femme Inconnue of the Louvre, which has long been con- sidered the work of Donatello; its rude realism refutes the idea of such paternity. Among the vast halls is one in Gothic style and there are dozens of bed- rooms, the place having something analogous to the Palace of the Popes at Avignon, which also now serves as barracks, with the difference that the Castel Nuovo THE FAILURE OF THE RENAISSANCE 73 has always been first of all a military building. What is there in it more interesting than the triumphal gate ? Between two towers that hold it close, it rises above all the walls and palisades, a jet of joy, pride, and perfect taste. In the midst of the fashionable quarter of modern Naples, opposite the most frequented novelty shop of the city, Alfonso's triumph reminds all generations of a great king who could no more fix his race upon his throne than could Robert of Anjou. The gate is one of the masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance. Although Alfonso allowed nothing to remain but the shell of the Angevin castle built by Frenchmen and decorated by Giotto, his own work imposed upon the savages sufficient respect of the Baroque, so that today it may call forth our unre- served admiration. Under this arch, flanked by four columns, Alfonso made his entrance into his good city upon a dais drawn by two horses. The arch is surmounted by another and smaller one, carrying four statues of saints in shell niches, the whole crowned by a pediment of incomparable beauty which finishes, and gives significance to, the entire work. This time, does it not seem to you that the Renais- sance was able to do what the Gothic could not : that is plant itself in Naples and with such success that Alfonso and his children would have no occasion to ask of Italy what she could not give? Although the 74 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES Gothic, for ethnical reasons, could not endure, the art of the Renaissance was to exist and perpetuate itself in virtue of the same reasons. Did Pietro di Mar- tino, in raising this triumphal arch, and Giuliano da Maiano, in casting these doors, express the Neapolitan impulse in the Italian awakening? They did this work in the most brilliant epoch of Italy, perhaps, at any rate, that in which the sap was rising with the most vigour. During the reign of the family of Ara- gon in Naples, there were at work at Florence, at Venice, in Umbria, at Padua, at Ferrara, and at Bologna these architects: Michelozzo, Alberti, Rossel- lino, Sangailo, Desiderio, Benedetto da Maiano; these sculptors: Luca della Robbia, Agostino di Ducio, Pollajuolo, Verrocchio, Mino da Fiesole, Civitali; these painters: Filippo Lippi, Benozzo Gozzoli, Filip- pino Lippi, Rosselli, Ghirlandajo, Lorenzo di Credi, Piero della Francesca, Perugino, Pinturrichio, Sig- norelli, Mantegna, Cossa, Costa, Giovanni Bellini. . . . What a company! Fortunate Naples which had but to gather the fruits of the Giottos, the Brunel- lescos, and the Donatellos ! At the call of Alfonso or under the impulse of his children, the city had only to blossom with all the arts arrived at their perfection. The phalanx had but to enter the gate of Castel Nuovo and spread throughout the city. Let us follow their footsteps and look for the wonders they have left. THE FAILURE OF THE RENAISSANCE 75 Painting: Beyond certain pictures foreign to Southern Italy, such as the Filippino Lippi and the Sebastiano del Piombo of the Palazzo Sant' Angelo, we find nothing. An epoch without painting! It is as inconceivable as, for a long time, France without a king was inconceivable. Do you remember, at Ver- sailles, the series of the kings of France from the time of the Chevelu ? Not one is missing, not a day is lost. It was absolutely necessary for the order and clear- ness demanded by simple souls. Yet, look here! A hundred years and those hundred years without paint- ing ! Can it be believed ? Nothing to bind the Gothic period to the Renaissance? Nothing to correspond on the side of painting to the side of sculpture ? What would become of the history of art if we had to insert a blank page? Oh, that was when the Flemish- Neapolitan school was born ! Certain it is that in the time of Alfonso relations existed between Flanders and the Kingdom of Naples, principally in Sicily. The Museum and private collections in Palermo bear testimony to that. Even though some people still deny it, there can be little doubt that Antonello of Messina was in Flanders, and no one questions the evidence of what he learned there and what others learned of him or of the pictures revealing the merits of those lessons. But a school? Where is it? There is, of course, in San Pietro Martiro a Legend of Saint 76 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES Vincent, in San Domenico a Christ Bearing the Cross, a Descent from the Cross, an Adoration of the Kings, and a Saint Jerome, another Adoration at the Nuovo, besides two other pictures in San Severino. Of works, done in the Flemish manner, one only had proofs of author- ship : the Saint Michael by Simone Papa in the Museum. The others are called somewhat hastily and gratui- tously of the Flemish-Neapolitan school. If we remember that for a long time the Saint Jerome and even the Adoration in the Nuovo were attributed to Van Eyck, does it not seem probable that all of these are Flemish works that found their way into Sicily, perhaps following Antonello, if indeed it was not upon seeing them that Antonello was impelled to visit Flanders? Commerce brought in others, too, for pictures often travelled in the strong boxes of the merchants. At any rate, it is too much to give the title of a school to a few painters somewhat influenced by Flemish painting. There were not enough of them and they copied too closely, since their work was taken for Van Eyck's. Of what we call painting when we think of Rome, of Florence, of Venice of Italy, in fact, Naples has nothing. Architecture: After the Nuovo, the church and convent of Monte Oliveto comes first in Neapolitan buildings. They were long believed to be the work of Ciccione; but Ciccione existed even less than the Alinari liumphal Arch of Alfonso d'Aragon, Castel Nuovo, Naples Alinari Detail of the Triumphal Arch of Alfonso d' Aragon Alinari Castel Nuovo, Naples Alinari Piazza di San Domenico Maggiore, with the Church and Obelisk, Naples Alinari Interior of the Church of Santa Restituta, Naples THE FAILURE OF THE RENAISSANCE 77 Flemish-Neapolitan school of painting. Anyway, the work was begun under Anjou, in 1411, and continued under Aragon in the style of the Renaissance. The church is a basilica with a ceiling, somewhat spoiled under the viceroys, yet keeping its sombre beauty and worthy of the works it encloses and which we shall soon see. In 1464, the Palazzo Cuomo was built in the primitive style of a Tuscan palace, the work of a Flor- entine, and sacrificed in our own time to the Strada del Duomo. In 1484, the Porta Capuana was built and the Castel del Carmine, the first by Giuliano da Mai- ano, is in the same style as the Triumphal Arch of the Nuovo, but ornamented in the sixteenth century in honour of Charles V.; the second was completely re- built after the failure of the Due de Guise to whom it had served as a retreat. Two other notable palaces are the Galbiati upon the Piazza San Domenico and the Gravina, the present post-office, with rusticated base and magnificent Corinthian pilasters. It would be fair, also, to leave to the Renaissance the Palazzo San Angelo, awkwardly reconstructed, like the Gra- vina. In 1482, Pontano ordered the building of San Giovanni Evangelista. Soon after that Santa Maria Nuova was restored, the Incoronata was built, and, at length, Alfonso II., after the earthquake, in 1485, undertook the reconstruction of the Duomo, which was again made over in the seventeenth cen- 78 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES tury. That is all of the Renaissance architecture of Naples. If you would like to see just how little the Baroque art is worth compared to its predecessors, go to the Duomo. Pass by a door in the left aisle, into Con- stantine's ancient basilica of Santa Restituta, which, mutilated as it is, remains the purest wonder of Naples. Two rows of columns are nothing they are every- thing! Two rows of pure, warm columns in Santa Maria Maggiore or in San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome awaken emotion in the least sentimental observers, the emotion aroused by old and exiled things, lost, strangers to all that surrounds them, standing out modestly from the luxury that would overpower them. In a corner of the great courtyard which Santa Resti- tuta has become, open a certain door. You are in San Giovanni in Fonte, the old baptistry dating from the sixth century, low, massive, bathed with the finest grey light, with a grand strength, an impressive force, majestic in its mystery, only equalled at Venice in the Zeno Chapel, and in the old Duomo at Brescia. Go down into the crypt, dating from 1492, small subterranean basilica with nave and aisles equal, with smooth columns and charming capitals of the Corinthian acanthus supporting the Ionic lobe. Then, if you must, go up again into the Baroque church no, not even Baroque, but where everything THE FAILURE OF THE RENAISSANCE 79 mingles, mixes, bangs together, disproportionate, too large, too little also, for so many things and for so few. After that, go into the chapel of Saint Januarius the venerated San Gennaro of the Neapolitans and look at the four pictures of Domenichino. Instantly all dis- appears except the basilica, the fonts, the crypt, and the great window ! In spite of the obstacles accumu- lated between them, the sparkling mass of blinding riches surrounding one, the real beauties stand united forever, and the last witnesses for antiquity murmur words sweet to the ear in behalf of the unpardonable Zampieri, assassinated for having dared Naples in the seventeenth century by being simple, true, firm; and the murmured words of fraternity are echoed through the crypt. Sculpture: Tombs, nothing but tombs, and many of them. Some of them are remarkable and worthy of the epoch that gave them being. They are Florentine. One sees some of them at the Duomo whose only merits, as Burckhardt says truly, are in associations and contrasts. There are many to be seen in San Giovanni a Carbonara where the Caraccioli family are gathered about their ancestor, Ser Gianni, Joan II. 's lover who died in her service. The most beautiful tomb in Naples, perhaps, that of Cardinal Brancaccio in Sant' Angelo a Nilo, is one of the purest and noblest results of the collaboration of 8o A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES Michelozzo and Donatello. Neither Venice nor Flor- ence possesses anything that surpasses the grandeur of the three figures supporting the sarcophagus, that on the right, especially, with the band upon the curling hair shading a face unequalled in vigour and tender- ness, and the two angels raising the curtain in marble to show the statue of the Cardinal in the sleep of death, a figure whose realism is the signature of Donatello. Other tombs, by Baboccio, are in the Duomo and in San Lorenzo. Last, but not least, in Sant' Anna dei Lombardi, as the church of Monte Oliveto is usually called, afe two of the most perfect monuments of the Renaissance: an altar and a tomb, by Rossellino. The altar is such a strong work and the bas-reliefs repre- senting the Adoration of the Shepherds is so true that for a long time both were attributed to Donatello, which says everything for them. But Donatello never came to Naples. It was at Pisa that he made the mausoleum of Cardinal Brancaccio in Sant' Angelo a Nilo. As for the mausoleum here in the Lombardi, like the altar, it is Rossellino's. He who knows its repetition, the tomb of the Cardinal of Portugal at San Miniato, Florence, has nothing to learn of this one. Aside from that resemblance, which proclaims a little too loudly the enterprising workman filling his orders, here stands one of the most charming expressions of the Renaissance. What a joy to meet Alinari jjmb of King Ladislaus, Church of >an Giovanni a Carbonara, Naples Alinari Monument of Maria of Aragon, Monte Oliveto, Naples Alinari mb of Cardinal Rinaldo Brancaccio. urch of Sant' Angelo a Nilo, Naples Alinari Detail of Tomb of Cardinal Rinaldo Brancaccio Alinari Interior of the Cathedral of Naples The Sacristy of the Church of San Domenico Maggiore, Naples THE FAILURE OF THE RENAISSANCE 81 it in Baroque Naples! It and Domenichino's work are the happiest objects of art in the city. It effaces everything even, in the same church, Mazzoni's terra-cotta statues of which Michelangelo said, mock- ingly, no doubt, "If this earth could become marble, woe to the statues of antiquity!" One has plenty of leisure to study Mazzoni at Modena. At Naples one is amused and astonished, troubled, even, by his anec- dote and his precision : the Mary Magdalen is Lucrezia d'Alagno loved by Alfonso; the Saint John is Alfon- so; the Christ his son Ferdinand; the Nicodemus is Pontano; and the Joseph of Arimathea, Sannazaro. One may be surprised at times, but never moved by them. That is all the sculpture. Let us forget nothing of importance. At the Museum we shall see a horse's head brought from the Palazzo Caraffa. It is in bronze and colossal, so beautiful, so masterly that the Neapolitans in their pride over it used to call it an antique. It is by Donatello. That is really all. In the sacristy of San Domenico Maggiore upon two rows of shelves are sarcophagi covered with faded velvet and ornamented with such emblems as swords or coats-of-arms. They have the form of trunks and stand in a line as if waiting to be shipped. Here lie the Aragonian kings, their wives, and their children. What a true knowledge of self! 6 82 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES Come as conquerors, they always held themselves ready to leave, bundles made up, their deaths accom- plished. Did they divine that this land could never give them that which they never gave it: not grandeur nor prosperity nor happiness? In spite of certain efforts made by Alfonso and his children, Naples refused to be embraced by the Aragons. All the works brought together here by that dynasty, with the exception of that of Laurana and of one or two strangers, who, no more than Giotto and the pupils of Giovanni Pisano, were able to teach Neapolitan hands the use of the brush, the .chisel, or the square. "As a result of the multiplicity of races that emi- gration from every corner of Europe has brought to Naples, one finds it extremely difficult to give a physiognomy that is common, local, to the works of art one encounters at every step." Who said this? Signore Salvatore di Giacomo whose poetic work expresses the soul of Naples. The entire page is one of the most enlightening we can read, so let us finish it : " Many examples cannot be found of a national art, an art that might be called Neapolitan. According to the masters of the moment, Naples saw the expression of divers foreign styles so that one is obliged to bring up side by side the political history and the history of the wonderful things that painting, architecture, and THE FAILVRE OF THE RENAISSANCE 83 sculpture have left here in abundance in the course of four or five centuries. "We are considering the epoch when there was not a little city in Italy, not a modest hill town whose civic impulse did not enrich it with its creations, as one can still see in Umbria, in Tuscany, in Lombardy, in Venetia, thus furnishing posterity with imperishable testimony of the proud and lofty merit of the people. Do we not know that in that remarkable epoch Naples did not know how to or would not use her own activity for her benefit as if she were refusing to take part in an unequal struggle? From the end of the Renaissance to the seventeenth century and to the eighteenth cen- tury, it is true, Naples shook off this disconcerting inertia, and at that period only did painters and sculp- tors appear there. And the names of some Neapolitan artists who arose from the unknown, in the course of the eighteenth century, are not only written in the books of their parishes, but are found in the book of art. "As to the preceding period, certainly the patriotic zeal shown in our day to decipher every chart upon which might be found trace of Neapolitan works is praiseworthy : but if the zealous workers have any care for the truth and for common sense, they cannot wish to work for falsities as De Dominici and others have finished by doing, and for the simple pleasure of creat- 84 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES ing local artists, for upon mere indication it is not possible to admit any of these conjectures." From what comes this impotence? Before looking for it and as an aid to finding it, let us read the history. On the death of Joan II., in 1435, Naples found her- self in the possession of two masters. One was Al- fonso of Aragon, adopted by Joan, and descendant, by Costanza, that daughter of Manfred who married Pedro of Aragon (some century and a half before), from Frederick II., grandson, through his mother Costanza, of Roger of the Two Sicilies. The other master was Rene d'Anjou, whom also, to be sure, Joan adopted in her will, but who had no rights here by reason of his countship of Anjou, his pretensions being based upon his birth as a Valois, Marie de Valois having been the mother of Joan. In fact, neither the filiation nor adoption counted in the case. Naples, however, was for him who could take her or for him whom the Pope, the King of France, the Emperor of Germany, the nobles of Italy, or condottieri in want of domain, might permit to take her. The preference of the Neapolitans counted for nothing either. Still, they declared themselves for Rene, out of feeling for his amiable brother Louis. Alfonso, who was in Sicily, started forth and laid siege to Gaeta. A Genoese fleet came to the rescue of THE FAILURE OF THE RENAISSANCE 85 Gaeta, the old hatred of the Genoese for the Catalon- ians was aroused, the old Mediterranean rivalry and took Alfonso prisoner to Genoa. He found means to get away, however, and went to Milan. It was not difficult to make Visconti see what danger would threaten Milan if Rend, the Provencal, became master of the south of Italy, and some time after February, 1434, strong in the support of Milan, Alfonso landed a second time at Gaeta. He was received with joy in memory of the humane disposition he had shown at the time of his first attack. What did Rend do? He found himself much hin- dered, being held prisoner by the Due de Bourgogne with whom he was squabbling over the succession of Lorraine. His wife, Elizabeth of Lorraine, came down into Italy in his stead. At the same time the Pope, too, sent down a little army, and Sforza also advanced, pretending to protect his fiefs, received in the time of Caraccioli, but in reality to deceive the kingdom, although prepared to fall back on Milan if he failed. That made four armies that the Neapolitan had to support with all the consequences that that word sug- gests in an epoch when a little pity for the inhabitants of Gaeta won for Alfonso the name of the Magnani- mous, which history has retained. Elizabeth kept up the struggle against Alfonso for three years until, at length, in 1438, Rend joined her, 86 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES bringing, however, nothing but his goodwill, when money and soldiers were in crying demand. Gradu- ally his partisans fell away from him, and he was starving on the 2d of June, when Alfonso entered the city by the aqueduct, as Belisarius had done. Rene" escaped, abandoned by the Pope who had crowned him and who also crowned Alfonso in his turn, on condi- tion that he drive Sforza out of the Marches of An- cona, far from unpleasant conditions, since Alfonso suspected Sforza's ambitions. At this point we touch the great epoch of the condottieri which we have met in the little cities of Italy. In respect to Naples particu- larly, it is interesting now to note the official French intervention. Hitherto it was the cousins, more or less near, of the King of France, who came down, and always at the call of Italy, with no intentions of con- quest. In 1447, the King of France, having heard so much of the wonders of Italy, began to think that he had some rights there through Valentine Visconti, wife of the Due d'Orleans, his uncle. To whom was Milan to fall? To Valentine's heir or to Visconti's son-in-law, Sforza? In 1450 it fell to Sforza. The quarrel gave Alfonso a little time to breathe, of which he took advantage to prepare a magnifi- cent reception to the Emperor Frederick III., who came to Naples for his fiancee Eleonora of Portu- gal, Alfonso's niece. We see traces of this imperial THE FAILURE OF THE RENAISSANCE 87 journey under the brush of Pinturicchio in the Cathe- dral at Siena. After the Emperor left, the war between Alfonso and Sforza reopened. It was interrupted by the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, and a short truce followed the signing of the Peace of Lodi. Then Jean d'Anjou, son of Rene", took possession of Genoa in the name of Charles VII., pretending to protect the city against the enterprise of Aragon. Thereupon Alfonso promptly sent a fleet into the Gulf of Genoa, but such results as that enterprise might have had were frustrated by Alfonso's sudden death, at the age of sixty-three years, on the iyth of June, 1458. Alfonso the Magnanimous left Naples to his natural son Ferdinand, and Sicily, as well as Sardinia, to his brother John, King of Aragon and Navarre. Al- fonso was what used to be called "an accomplished prince": kind, gentle, his lofty pride tempered by his extremely charming manner; a man of prestige and of adventures or, at least, one whose memory was long kept green by stories of his brave doings. Married to Margaret of Castile he loved Margaret of Hijar, whom his wife had strangled. From that time, it is said, he never wished to see his queen again and for that reason he left Aragon. His Neapolitan court reminded the Italians of that of Manfred and the kings of Sicily, frequented as it was by men of letters and scholars. 88 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES His coat-of-arms bore an open book, and he never travelled without his volumes of Livy and Caesar. Popular as no other king ever was, he walked about the streets of Naples without escort, saying, " A father has nothing to fear from his children." He welcomed and listened to the humblest of them, even taking a tender interest in their love affairs. The people al- ways remembered how magnanimously he had treated his wife, never being willing to punish her, satisfied to see her no more. When it was known in Naples that he had fallen in love with Lucrezia d'Alagno, the daughter of a Neapolitan nobleman, there was tre- mendous excitement. And Pius II. affirms in his commentaries that great as was the romantic at- mosphere surrounding Alfonso, Lucrezia never yielded to him. No heir to the throne ever had such a fair heritage as was left to Ferdinand I. (Don Ferrante), not even Joan I., succeeding to the kingdom of Robert the Wise with whom Alfonso was compared. Was Ferdinand Alfonso's son? Some say that he was, but not the son of Margaret of Hijar, that she only assumed the maternity to screen the mother, her sister-in-law. Others, among whom were Pontano, Ferdinand's secretary, say that his mother was a certain Vilardona and his father a Mussulman shoemaker of Valencia. But Pontano was such a sorry wretch! Counsellor THE FAILURE OF THE RENAISSANCE 89 and friend of the King, a man who though obliged to run away from his native city in Umbria had found unheard-of good fortune in Naples, yet who threw himself into the arms of Charles VIII., the conqueror of the kings, to whom he owed everything and whom he had tried to dishonour. Notwithstanding all this, Naples still keeps his ashes with those of his wife, of his three children, and of an intimate friend, all together with interminable epitaphs dictated by the responsible father himself. Whether Ferdinand was the son of Alfonso or the Valencian shoemaker no one but Pon- tano troubled himself. Since 1443 he had been pro- claimed successor by his legal father and recognized by the Pope. A few months after he took the throne Ferdinand learned of the death of Calixtus III., Borgia, formerly Bishop of Valencia, who, after having married him, under Pope Nicholas V., to a daughter of the Orsini, turned against him, claiming the reversion of the throne of Naples to the Holy See. But Pius II., whose mind was always on the Turks, recognized Ferdinand and proposed to him that he give his sister Marie in marriage to his, the Pope's nephew. So everything opened most propitiously for the new reign, in a beautiful consolidated kingdom, which had a preponderate influence in Italy and in the entire world. There was no one even to the Turks, threatening danger, who did not give the King an im- 9 o A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES portant part to play. Every one smiled on Ferdi- nand. And what had the throne of Naples? Another Joan I. grinning upon it ! At the Museum you should not fail to see that bust of the man of at least forty, which, by manifest error, bears the name of Ferdinand II., since Ferdinand II. died at the age of twenty- seven years. There had been, it is true, before Alfon- so's time, a Ferdinand, King of Aragon and Castile, who was King of Sicily from 1412 to 1416, and if he were called the First, King Alfonso's heir would have been Ferdinand II.; but the inscription would be none the less confusing, for in the Palazzo Scorciati the same bust is seen with a crown, instead of a hood, and is called Ferdinand I. Never anywhere was seen a physiognomy more stupid and bestial! One would be tempted to say never could there be such another if it were not for that perfection of this type in another Ferdinand II. of the Two Sicilies, him of 1830 to 1848, the Bourbon the notorious King Bomba. Listen to what was said by Commines who but repeated what was said to him: " No man was ever more cruel than he (Alfonso II., the son of Ferdinand I.), nor wickeder, nor more vicious, more contaminating, nor a greater gourmand. The father (Ferdinand) was more danger- ous, for no one knew when he was in his rages ; and when he was most playful he was taking people in and be- THE FAILURE OF THE RENAISSANCE 91 traying them. . . . He bought and sold the entire kingdom, even to putting out his swine upon the people to- fatten them so that they might sell for a better price, but if they died, the people had to pay him for them. In the places where oil was produced, as in Apulia, he and his son bought it all before it was ripe and sold it after it was mature enough to use, so that no one but they could have the benefit of the sale. Are we surprised, then, to learn that after a few months he had estranged all his subjects, even his father-in- law who held Lecce and Taranto? Everyone began to look towards the Aragonian of Sicily, John of Na- varre, Alfonso's brother. It seems that Alfonso, who must have known his son's character, foresaw that the people would tire of him, and was it not as a resource for them that he left Sicily to his brother John ? At any rate, the people saw it so, but as John had affairs requiring his attention in Catalonia at that moment, he put them off. The Neapolitan barons were not in a mood to wait and turned to Jean d'Anjou who con- sented to come down on condition that Sforza agree to aid him. It was a prudent condition. Surely Sforza could not favour the acquisition of an Italian kingdom by a Provencal without risking his own duchy." Jean was pressed by the impatient barons now full of en- thusiasm for this prince, agreeable, loyal, and good, a worthy son of his father Rene, till, at length he decided 92 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES to act without Sforza. Coming down in spite of the opposition of Pius II., he cut Ferdinand's army to pieces at Sarno in 1460. Naples was open to him, when he saw rise before him the most enraged of all Ferdinand's enemies, the father-in-law, Orsini! He, like Sforza, like all the condottieri, had an eye on the ripe pear for himself. Perhaps, too, he had been moved by the prayers of his daughter Isabel, Ferdi- nand's wife, whose courage, grace, and virtue made her the idol of the Neapolitans. Appealing to them, with her six children before her, she succeeded in preserving the throne for her unworthy husband. Ferdinand soon set forth again to war, running to Foggia to raise money for his troops. The great plain of Tavoliera was, in winter, the only feeding-place of the millions of sheep that Alfonso had imported from Aragon and which, in spring, went back up into the mountains where they lived most of the year. The shepherds were obliged to pay certain taxes to go and to come back. The seat of war was then in Apulia, and the question was which of the two armies would arrive there first. The honours carried off by one, the other would not insist, but would try to be more prompt six months later. This year, Ferdinand arrived first, and the old land of the Normans, Guiscard and Roger, of German Frederick and Manfred saw an army of Frenchmen grappling with Ferdinand, Aragonian THE FAILURE OF THE RENAISSANCE 93 descendant of those Normans and Germans. In the meantime Orsini had again turned against his son-in- law, while Sforza, the most clear-sighted of all of them, was powerless to galvanize even the most selfish Ital- ian feelings in favour of the abject son of Alfonso. Then Ferdinand had his father-in-law strangled; Jean d'Anjou fled to refuge in Ischia, where Rene" his father came to take him home. Ferdinand returned victor to Naples where he arrested all those who had shown a leaning toward the Angevin prince, confiscat- ing their property, of course, and assassinating them. And, his virtuous wife being dead, he married Sforza's daughter Hippolyta. As the Pope had been favourable to Ferdinand, there was him to pay. Florence, on which Sixtus IV. had just played the trick of the plot of the Pazzi, was to serve as the ransom. It would only cost Ferdinand some of his soldiers. But Ludovico il Moro, Sforza's son, made Ferdinand understand the danger he ran in enlarging the power of the Holy See by giving Flor- ence into the papal control. Lorenzo de' Medici then made a visit to Naples in great pomp. " Instead of weakening ourselves," he said to Ferdinand, "let us unite against the French, who are the present danger." On March 25, 1480, the peace was signed between Naples and Florence in spite of the Pope and so evi- dently arousing his spite that, some months later, when 94 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES Turks landed at Otranto, Ferdinand on hearing of it, exclaimed, "That is a blow from the Pope!" It was not the Pope who struck, but Venice. The death of Mohammed II., however, recalled the Turks and Ferdinand breathed more freely. Then Sixtus IV. died and Ferdinand had more work to defend himself, for the new Pope knew him too well. He was Innocent VIII. (Cib6), Bishop of Amalfi, brought up at the court of Alfonso. Hardly was the tiara on his head before he had the whole world in motion against the King of a persecuted Naples. In 1492 he called upon Charles VIII. , King of France, to come and gather the beautiful kingdom of Naples for the papacy, although he did not say so. Charles was not ready, and did not make himself so until the last of 1494, and, by that time, Ferdinand was dead but not before he had married the natural daugh- ter of his son Alfonso to the son of the Borgia Pope. What followed is part of the history of France. Charles VIII. came down into Italy and entered Naples, Alfonso II. ran away as fast as his legs would carry him and died in Sicily. His son, Ferdinand II., who resembled his ancestor Alfonso I., reconquered the kingdom. Naples began to flourish again. But Ferdinand fell madly in love with his aunt Joanna, married her, and died September 7, 1496, it was said, of exhaustion. THE FAILURE OF THE RENAISSANCE 95 Naples, too, was dying of exhaustion: no army, no money, the land uncultivated, cities and castles dis- mantled . Such was the state of the kingdom inherited by Frederick, uncle of Ferdinand II. The end of the Aragon rule had come. The struggle against the King of France was materially impossible, and, on the other hand, Louis XII. refused all offers of tribute, of garri- sons, and of vassalage. What Louis wanted was to divide Naples and Sicily with King Ferdinand II. the Catholic of Sicily, son of King John of Aragon, Navarre, and Sicily, therefore nephew of Alfonso the Magnani- mous. The bargain was struck abominably, for the Catholic was to pretend to send allies to Frederick of Naples and when the soldiers were in occupation of their divers posts, the Catholic would take for his share Apulia (with the sheep) and Calabria, leav- ing Naples and the Abruzzi to the King of France. Gonsalvo of Cordova would land in Sicily. Some months later, Frederick left Naples, driven out by his allies, taking refuge in France with Louis XII. who was as undeceived as himself. In 1504 he died in Anjou, of which Louis XII. had created him count, the last irony! His oldest son died, without children, in Spain in 1550. His second son died at Grenoble, poisoned, in 1515. His third son died at Ferrara at the age of eighteen years. His daughter Charlotte, married to the Count of Laval, had a daughter Anne 96 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES who married Frangois de la Tre*moille. The line never found its way back to the throne of Naples. After a thousand vicissitudes with which the history of France has made us familiar, the entire Kingdom of Naples was given by the Treaty of Blois to Ferdinand II., the Catholic of Sicily whose heir and grandson was the Hapsburg, Charles V., Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, King of Spain. The King then had larger fish to fry than those in the fat of Naples or of Sicily, and the era of the viceroys began. It is time to close the chapter on Aragon rule. Neither in the fourteenth nor in the fifteenth centu- ries was there a national art in the Kingdom of Naples. Strangers to Southern Italy came and worked here or sent their work here. With some exceptions, such as Giovanni da Nola, who, however, was but fifteen years old in 1503, exceptions which were insufficient to con- stitute what might be called an art, there was no one here to profit by the lessons of the visiting artists. As for the time of Anjou, the reason is clear: Gothic art could not lodge in the Italian brain. But Aragon ? In the Aragonian days the art brought into Naples was of the Renaissance, ethnically Italian. Giotto was Italian, too, yet the pure representatives of the genius of the race under Aragon succeeded no better than he. The Renaissance passed by Naples as great a stranger as had been the Gothic. There must be THE FAILURE OF THE RENAISSANCE 97 some other reason, then, equally applicable to Anjou and Giotto as to Aragon and Maiano. In both cases, we must remember the reigns of bad government. Who, indeed, after having read the histories of the reigns of the two Joans, of Ferdinand I. and of Al- fonso II. can wonder if any one ever had leisure for art ? Even this does not answer all inquiry. Other coun- tries of Italy, prey to factions, to nobles, to condottieri, did not fail to work steadily at art. Surely there were Medici who outdid the Joans, Visconti worse than Ferdinand, Estes to match Alfonsos, and Malatesta to pale all Aragon! But the most badly treated of their cities, like Bologna, Perugia, Pisa, Orvieto, still found means to rise to the highest rank in art. In Naples, it seems as if there was a worm in the bud, a mole burrowing under ground and cutting the roots. The blight was the natural poverty of Southern Italy which I have already described and discussed, 1 yet cannot pass over without some brief references here, so great a factor is it in the artistic poverty of Naples. Apart from the Campania, sort of oasis on the edge of the desert, whose reputation at- tracted the pillage which reduced it to the common level, Southern Italy is made up of the least fertile lands of the peninsula. When Naples shall have be- come the great industrial city towards which we, in the 1 Little Cities of Italy, vol. iii (in preparation). 7 9 8 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES first years of this twentieth century, see the initial efforts, perhaps the conditions of culture in Southern Italy will be improved. The workman will ask for his daily bread from the Neapolitan factories, instead of seeking it across the seas. A lower middle class will then form rapidly among these sober and industrious people, that is to say, a saving class whose economies will extend over the paternal fields. Schools, become more numerous, will raise the mental level of the individual, permitting a more intelligent culture which will comprehend, among other things, the necessity of respecting the forests cut down in earlier days by the nobles avaricious for quick profits. That is for the future. Any good government should favour the intellectual and material amelioration of a country which, however far back its history can be traced, only shows ceaseless exploitation exhausting its resources and indifference to the morrow, systematically main- tained in decay in order to grind it down without in- convenient revolt. And its profits, instead of serving, as does the money today sent home from America by the emigrants, almost exclusively to pay the taxes, when it does not filter through the savings banks into the general budget of Italy, will become one of the forces consecrated to the improvement of the land. It will be invested in the country by the brothers of the workmen, the sons who are willing to stay at home THE FAILURE OF THE RENAISSANCE 99 because it will have become worth while for them to remain in their villages. But it will never be more than an amelioration, even if Southern Italy obtains what she is crying for so loudly, the assessment of the taxes. At present she pays one third of the imposts of the realm and her share is but one quarter of the total product of the nation. And the cleverest and most economical industry can never rectify the distribution of the waters of heaven or transform the calcareous rock into fertile ground. In Southern Italy, rain falls but at certain times and when vegetation is nothing, that is from December to March. That is why the flocks of Tavoliera go up in the mountains every spring. During the months of spring and summer it rains eight times more in Lom- bardy than in Apulia and Calabria. Now, no rain, no fodder; no fodder, no cattle; no cattle, no husbandry, no stock. And even when there is rain, on what soil does it fall? On a soil of scaly slate or of limestone upon which there are no visions of fattening stock. If the plough does not furrow dry mud, it scrapes the limestone. You must go through Apulia from Foggia to Lecce and Otranto to understand the poverty of a land which is scraped clean of all humus and which no cloud sprinkles for months together even when, in spite of all opposition, some friendly humus tries to collect. Bad land and bad climate: Ireland and Italy, it has ioo A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES been said. Here is an Ireland where it does not rain, and this land has been from unknown time what it is now. The generous splendour of Naples should not deceive us. The moment we pass beyond the Cam- pania we are on the land of the Normans and the Ara- gonians. One must be dull indeed not to comprehend the influence of such poverty upon the social develop- ment of a country and, consequently, upon its arts! The Roman Empire had hardly disappeared when Northern Italy began to arrange for an independent life, city by city, each one for itself, and finding satis- faction in the results. One learns how to become master of one's own destinies when one no longer has need of another for subsistence. With a little ex- change one is more than prosperous. In that way developed all those little republics which make Italian history so passionate, cities that became full of works showing all the manifestations of a personal art. Southern Italy, on the contrary, remained like a solid block, a rock without a cleavage, indivisible. It was because not one of her cities could live by itself. They barely managed to exist by shouldering up one another. That is, they hung together, sustaining one another, forming a whole appreciable as a mass by those who should wish to possess an Italic holding at the price of protecting it. The Greeks, who dreamed of recon- structing the universal empire, the Lombards, seeking THE FAILURE OF THE RENAISSANCE 101 to bring back to life the Occidental Empire, the Nor- mans who wanted to rejuvenate that Empire, asked of it only roadstead, fortresses, refuges, a base of supplies and of operations, in fact. The Greek civilization was at Byzantium, that of the Lombards in Lombardy, that of the Normans in Sicily. Naples was but a camp and a battlefield. The people gathered about these different masters who brought them some money in exchange for their services and their servitude, who sometimes paid for the poor harvests, instead of appro- priating them, who sometimes almost fed the people building the fortresses, who protected the sheep in view of the taxes they yielded, who employed the men in military service, furnishing them with something to eat and giving them opportunities to pillage. Know- ing what masters they were, the Neapolitans pressed about them, knowing, too, that the day those masters should leave them would mark the day of their death upon a dry and rebellious soil. The artistic flight we see in Northern Italy was im- possible to Southern Italy where it had not even a municipal life, but life cut short. When men are hungry they do not dream of building and painting. Intellectual development goes hand in hand with pro- sperity. Florence and Venice show that clearly enough. Rome, on the contrary, abandoned or exploited, stagnated until the sixteenth century. Naples stag- 102 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES nated still more. Did she really create nothing? For an instant, we may raise an illusion that she did something in letters. Under Alfonso and his son there was, at Castel Nuovo, a sort of literary and academi- cal court presided over by Beccadelli and to which his Hermaphrodite gave the tone. The movement was superficial and factitious. If it had been not even profound, but simply comprehensible, it would have lived. An amusement in which puerility vied with verbosity, an amusement of the King who wished to raise himself to the height of a Medici or a Montefeltro; when the King was no longer, it disappeared. The plastic arts were equally ephemeral. Artists who came here and masterpieces that were sent here made no impression upon a people too poor to produce any- thing whatever. Let us accustom ourselves to think of Italy from the double point of view, the natural and the historic, to see two Italies, the Northern and the Southern; the one independent and prosperous, the other united and impoverished. In that light every- thing becomes clear. Now we shall be able to understand that the arrival of Ferdinand II. the Catholic of Sicily changed nothing. He was, apparently, a new conqueror, but to Naples his coming was a repetition of the same old story: a foreigner who brought her the least advan- tages of which she was in need for existence in exchange THE FAILURE OF THE RENAISSANCE 103 for rights to hold garrisons of soldiers ready to march northwards. The viceroy was but a repetition of the imperial spathaire, of the duke, of the Norman count laying hands upon the country. It was at the wish of the viceroy that Ribera and his band landed at Naples one day. That was an invasion which ended in giv- ing life to a certain sort of school, accomplishing that which six or seven centuries of effort had failed to do : make a sterile country productive. So much for the fact. It now remains for us to know how, in what conditions, for what reasons the Baroque art took root in Naples, and if the viceroys, having gathered the pitiful harvest sown by the others, were not cleverer than the Angevins or the Aragonese, although making use of different means than theirs, in fooling a people constrained by their deprivations to believe in them. FourtH Day THE TRIUMPH OF THE BAROQUE Naples xinder tKe Viceroys OW we are at the Inferno! However well acquainted you may be with the Italian genius through Virgil and Dante, some fear on the moment of entering is excusable, ^neas himself did not dare to make the descent alone: he needed the arm of the Sibyl. Dante took the hand of Virgil. Who will lead us ? 104 THE TRIUMPH OF THE BAROQUE 105 A sculptor, Giovanni Merliano da Nola. With him we shall be brave, and, above all, we shall not get lost. Standing between the Renaissance and the Baroque, Nola's work is the chain that links us to reason and to probity. From time to time a slight tension assures us that we are still held and that we must ourselves hold tight. In looking at Nola's work, do we not ask ourselves if, indeed, our judgment was not hasty in condemning the Renaissance at Naples to sterility? Let us say, rather, that if Nola, an earnest and honest man, was not only unable to found a school, but incapable himself of persevering, surely there was nothing doing in the artistic line at Naples. His Saint John at San Domeni- co Maggiore is simple and sincere, and in it we see that the sculptor had been deeply moved by Donatello and Rossellino, especially by Donatello. When he gave himself up to his inspiration, Nola maintained great dignity, but he gradually abandoned himself to facil- ity and success. From time to time he had attacks of conscience, as with the tomb of Antonia Gaudino in Santa Chiara, with the altar at San Domenico (the Virgin of which is a charming expression of emotion and whose angels recall those of Maiano) , and with the tomb of Andrea Cicara in San Severino whose decora- tions remind us of a Roman frieze. We are, however, too often offended by the "art lover" who ordered the 106 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES work, the commercial atmosphere which surrounded the artist, the appetite awakened by the easy and remunerative work which so carried the worker off his feet that he profaned the Cicara tomb with the Baptist carrying his hand on his heart ; what was he thinking of when he chiselled that John flinging out a dancer's leg on the inspired altar of San Domenico, and when he fashioned the statue of Antonia lying with her head in her hand, her legs bearing a book over which she has just gone to sleep: no doubt reading the verses of Pontano! One of Nola's last works was the tomb of the viceroy Pedro de Toledo, who died in 1553, only five years before Nola's death. In that work the artist disappeared entirely. He is always sombre enough through excess of modesty, and here the sub- ject imposes gravity, yet he has managed to miss all the firmness and nobility that might be expected of so much seriousness. In the figures kneeling at praying- desks, which look like vases of flowers, in the woman reading her missal, a beautiful helmet between the gentleman and the lady, in the cardinal virtues, not one of which could ever be considered a Chastity, in all the work anecdote and mannerism reign supreme. The admirable bas-relief representing the entry of Pedro into Naples alone sustains the honest reputa- tion of the master. Of Nola's pupils the two ablest collaborated with Alinari Saint John, Church of San Domenico Maggiore, Naples Alinari Tomb of Don Pedro of Toledo, Church of San Giacomo Maggiore THE TRIUMPH OF THE BAROQUE 107 him : Santa Croce, whose greatest work is the charm- ing altar of Monte Oliveto, and Auria whose name will long be held in grateful remembrance for the fountain of Santa Lucia now in the Villa Nazionale. After them came Caccavello, who owed much to Gonsalvo de Cordova, the first viceroy of Naples, whose chapel in Santa Maria la Nuova he ornamented, placing in it the Frenchman Lautrec who died under the walls of Naples in 1528; Stefani with a Virgin in wood; Bor- ghetti with two saints of wonderful simplicity; and one or two others perhaps. That is all. With Nola's death the movement stopped. Naples produced no more sculptors. The only two other notable monu- ments are the work of foreigners : one by Malvito, for the Caraffa, in the Duomo; the other by Montorsoli, for Sannazaro, in Santa Maria del Porto. Later, it is true, Fansaga tried to take up the thread, but we never see anything of his in which sculpture is not too subservient to architecture to merit considera- tion by itself. The most that we owe to Fansaga in sculpture is his pupil Bernini, the author of the Apollo and Daphne and the David. It would be cruel to hold Fansaga responsible for the Saint Teresa. After all it is said Fansaga was a Lombard, and Nola, who made his appearance under the Aragonese, was directly influenced by the Renaissance, so, notwithstanding the fact that he continued to work and to have something like a io8 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES school, it may be admitted that the art of the chisel did not exist in the time of the viceroys. Nola learned his trade by looking at Donatello. He moulded five or six pupils, and there Neapolitan sculpture ends. As the Renaissance grew more remote, nothing new appeared. When the Renaissance was dead, the Neapolitan soil, so slightly enriched by it, lapsed once more into sterility. Before commenting on the causes of these things, let us investigate a little further. In looking at archi- tecture two categories of monuments are seen : those which were original and those which were appropriated. The latter are innumerable ; the former, comparatively rare five churches in all. The first is Santa Caterina a Formello, near the Porta Capuana, built in 1524 by a Florentine architect. The second, San Giacomo degli Spagnuoli, whose exterior merit it is difficult to appre- ciate shut in as it is by the Municipio, was built by Ferdinand in 1820. The third, the Gesu or Santa Trinita, whose Greek cross is a Norman souvenir, and whose fagade is that of the palace, is said to be by Salerne, dating from the Renaissance. The fourth is San Paolo, whose outer portico used to be the entrance to the temple of Castor and Pollux, of which an earth- quake left standing but two columns, and behind them the present insignificant facade was built at the close of the seventeenth century. The last of the five THE TRIUMPH OF THE BAROQUE 109 churches belonging to the category of original monu- ments is that of San Filippo Neri, or de' Gerolomini, also shut in, and portions of it sacrificed. So much for the new churches. Now for those which have been rebuilt. In passing through some of them, let us take a rapid glance here and there at their paintings, just enough to remember their character in view of the approaching hour when we shall be pre- pared by a general survey to judge the works and their authors. We already know that the Gesu made use of a Re- naissance palace and San Paolo of an ancient temple. Now we find San Domenico's walls to have been built in the time of the Angevin Charles II. One would say that it was a Sicilian church, almost like the buildings inspired by the Arabs and by Byzantium. These walls have not been touched since they were built ; they stand firmly and their surfaces lend themselves to decoration. Let us go in. The old arches are still here, but, alas, scratched, incrusted, overcharged. Their beauty, which lies exclusively in lightness of line, has disappeared under a dazzling coffer ceiling. There is little painting. The interesting objects of San Domenico are the tombs of Caraffa and, still more, that of Pignatelli, Count of Monteleone which is equal to an Andrea Bregno. Nola, too, worked much in San Domenico. We are on the lookout for him, al- no A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES ways finding pleasure and profit in glancing at his work, feeling the chain a bit in passing. The Baroque painting triumphs with a masterpiece in the sacristry. The ceiling above the coffins of the Aragonese is brilliant with every shade of red and yellow, with a joyous light, full of the fire and life of the genius of Solimena, whose pupils, Bonito, Mura, and Conca were able to learn from him something of grouping and pose. There is a little of everything in this ceiling : the damned thrown down by the archangel, the triumph of the Holy Sacrament, Saint Dominick blessed by the Virgin, who smiles at him with the most tender grace, Jesus brought down from the Cross by cherubs, and an Eternal Father coming out of a bowl carried by angels. Jesus is ridiculous: he looks as if he were jumping down from the cross while whirling his arms around like an acrobat; the archangel seems to be driving out the damned by kicks in their stomachs, and the saintly monk appears to be excusing himself from a too ardent declaration. But all this is enveloped in a pleasant light, the nudes are frank; it is, indeed, a flowery gar- land formed by all these figures, bound one to another without being tied, yet cleverly spread out ; above all, the pose and action are executed with such frankness, such truth that we immediately think of Solimena as studying Domenichino's frescoes in the chapel of San Januarius of the Cathedral. It is all so pleasing that Alina Fountain, Villa Nazionale, Naples Alina The Cloisters of San Martino, Naples THE TRIUMPH OF THE BAROQUE ill we feel inclined to be more indulgent than the President de Brosses when he said: "If there had been only Solimena and I in the world, he would never have earned fifty sous with his insipid manner and his com- positions lacking all signs of genius." We would have given him at least a hundred sous! At the Gesu we find Solimena again, this time beside his predecessors Stanzioni, Ribera, and Corenzio, and his superiority over them is seen at once. The pic- ture of Heliodore is the work of a born painter who had the misfortune to come into the world late, when all artistic self-respect was lost. Since we are in the square of the Gesu and have just left that of San Do- menico we must glance at the obelisks which decorate it. They are about all that is left of the architecture of the epoch of the viceroys. If it could not express itself otherwise than this, what wisdom it showed to keep still! Take a beautiful nouveau-art guilloche- handled seal for luxurious letter paper or a sumptuous heavy-topped umbrella handle, such as we give to brides when we want to make an impressive wedding present, stand it up on your table, and you will have a representation of these monuments which make the most deplorable effect imaginable before the rusticated facade of the Gesu and the Norman apse of San Domenico. San Paolo, as we have seen, was built behind the A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES columns of the Dioscuri. Other columns, imitations, are lined along with the originals. The interior has the same profusion of the paintings of Solimena, Corenzio, and Stanzioni in their respective places and always the same architectural nullity. The same is to be said of the insignificant fagade and of certain portions of the churches of Sansevero and Sosio, where the windows, framed in vermicelli, lead you to look at the paintings on the ceiling. San Lorenzo, like so many other churches, has almost disappeared between houses, and we know that the nave of that, too, was sacked. At the Carbonara, so curious at the head of its steps, one entire chapel was given up to Vasari, which must have been, at that time, the height of luxury. But must we not forgive him everything on account of his History of the Painters ? He was a great malefactor, but with such good intentions and so devoted to painting ! We have seen what the Baroque made of Santa Restituta, mutilating the venerable basilica and overcharging what remained of it. The Gerolomini are still more encumbered. Its principal ornament is a Christ in the Temple by Giordano, pupil of Ribera and for whom Brosses shows an indulgence that all of us cannot share. Then, at length, at Santa Maria la Nuova we find the work of Santafede the Elder, and of Simone Papa the Younger, and Imparato, contemporaries of Ribera, his imitators and his servitors. THE TRIUMPH OF THE BAROQUE 113 On writing this the pen falls from my hand; but I arouse my courage to sum up all by what is, perhaps, the most striking example. From the square of San Lorenzo, which cuts into the Strada d' Tribunali, an infamous little street, full of filth and of ill-smelling shops, goes down toward the Strada San Biagio de' Librai. The worst and dirtiest element of Naples lounges about here at its ease. Going along this alley, we suddenly come upon a portico shut off by a grille decorated with a rusty piece of sheet-iron pierced by a thousand holes. Along the entire length of this rail- ing, the steps in front of it are occupied by venders who must have carried on their business here for a long time. To enter the church, it is necessary to go down a sort of blind alley more abominable than the open one we have just left. At the end of it a custo- dian opens the door to our knock and we enter. So it is that, in this sordid little street, in the midst of all this poverty, within these walls whose exterior is black as the infernal regions with the filth of twenty lustres, we find a very orgy of gold. One great nave, without aisles, a ballroom indeed, is bordered by chapels starred with marbles, with reliquaries and shining relics; above are windows ornamented with guilloche, and framed with the style of chariots called the berlin, and projecting over the nave are bronze lattice-work balconies. High up at the end of the church the monks' U4 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES gallery is enclosed by the same trellis. On the ceiling is all the wealth of the richest palettes. It is an outpour- ing, a dazzling prodigality, all the human work of the people, whose cries we hear through the walls, is for the achievement of this golden orgy, this church, sister of all the others, in which not an inch of stone can be seen, wherein there is not a corner which has not absorbed, like the others, its part of the sacrifice. This church is called San Gregorio Armeno. It must be seen to be understood. Lost as it is in one of the lowest quarters of Naples, without exterior form as it is without glory, the least known of all the churches in the city, perhaps, it is the most significant, the type. When you have come out again and resumed your slippery, calamitous walk, you will find yourself able to come to some conclusions, to solve at least the first half of the problem. As for sculpture, there is none: it has completely disappeared. Architecture? We have just seen that it played a sort of cuckoo game, taking possession of the nest of others to save the trouble of building its own. We see it installed behind old facades or within ancient walls to which it sometimes adds a new facade to avoid too great a contrast with its interior. But the composition of a harmonious building, of lines carefully thought out, of well-considered detail, in fact, a church whose situation and all its aspects and effects THE TRIUMPH OF THE BAROQUE 115 were calculated in the plans, that art was unknown here. The Neapolitan builders patched, resoled, turned their garments wrong side out, but they de- livered nothing new. The art of treating stone and marble did not exist amongst them : they had no sense of creating beauty in their trade. To them stone and marble were materials of utility, not of artistic ex- pression. We ask ourselves to what, then, was architecture thus sacrificed? We have just been in all these poly- chrome churches, seen their pictures and frescoes. But what we have not looked at is their architectural detail. Everything is in that. It explains the whole matter, and we shall understand it when we have seen how each detail of this decorative work is absolutely and always subordinated to the pictorial effect. This one single purpose is evident in each marble, each gar- land, mosaic, column: To draw the eye toward the ceiling, where shines the full beauty of the great work. Each detail is prepared and fixed to declare this beauty. The church itself is no more than an enormous frame for the painter's work. At the end of the nineteenth century, the fashionable gift was a small panel, no larger than a snapshot. This tiny panel was mounted at the very back of an elaborately engraved, cubic, golden box. Such are the churches of Naples; and such, on a larger scale, is the painting. ii6 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES At their bases the columns are simply wrought, long shafts of marble with no excess of sculptured detail. As the eye searches higher, it encounters a slight elaboration of decorative carving, enhanced by varie- gated colourings. At the cornice shine overhanging masses of gold, having no other reason or purpose for being than their appeal to one's taste for the beautiful. Here, too, the windows show their first richness of decoration. One's glance is soon to rest on the ceiling ; one must be prepared for it by a prodigal profusion of carved cupids and sculptured garlands. And then . . . the arch. What an outburst of beauty, leaping to meet the eye ! Whole trees seem to have been im- mersed in baths of fluid gold, and then rewrought and fashioned. Between their branches a score of random open spaces appear. And through these spaces the brush has let flow its rivers of carmine, ochre, emerald, white, and rose . . . overpowering colour, colour! What bent backs, twisted limbs, contorted faces! It cannot be! One looks again, more carefully. This distorted image is a martyr, that exaltation represents an Assumption, the defiant distortion is a Crucifixion. But they are all set forth with an incomparable genius for brutal effect. Never, perhaps, did one art so compel all others to submit to its despotism. Sculp- ture has disappeared, monumental architecture counts for nothing, since there no longer is any but decorative THE TRI UMPH O F THE BAROQUE 117 architecture, that is to say a mere frame for the paint- ing. Everything is subservient, bowing itself low, working for the glory and good fortune of the painters. Do they show themselves on the heights of such sacri- fices as they demand of their brothers? We shall see in an instant, and, in the meantime, think of their wonderful genius for directing, their abilities for organization, their unsurpassed commercial faculties! Thanks to their assiduous exercise of these aptitudes, after a few years the painters' was the only artistic profession that counted in this world. Listen to Misson in the eighteenth century : "There are few beautiful church fagades at Naples. All the beauty is within. Vaulting, panelling, walls, everything is either coated with marbles, with precious and artistic inlaid work, or with coffers in bas-reliefs, and joinery gilded and enriched with the paintings of the most famous painters. On all sides one sees no- thing but jasper, porphyry, mosaics of every sort, and masterpieces of art. I have visited twenty-five or thirty of these superb edifices; one is constantly filled with surprise in going about in them. If it were possible to unite eight or ten of them into one that was well arranged with regularity and taste, it would be the most magnificent thing imaginable." That is an opinion of the churches of Naples two n8 hundred years ago. Here is one of the present time: that of Signer Salvatore di Giacomo : "The churches, ruled by a new architectonic idea, have their inner walls covered by marbles and stuc- coes, and the very marbles, with a happy audacity, covered by a polychrome decoration. Such is the Gesu, which preserves, it is true, the rusticated facade of the austere palace of Prince de Salerne, but whose large interior, in the form of a Greek cross, is dressed with bronzes and brilliant marbles. Such is the new church of San Paolo, built upon the foundations of the Temple of Castor and Pollux. Such is the church of the Gerolomini, opposite the Duomo, whose sacristy is a veritable and rare picture gallery (no, a decidedly ordinary one!), and which has. scattered through its chapels and tightly held in its framed ceilings, the pic- tures of Imparato, of Luca Giordano, and of Matteis, the frescoes of Corenzio, of Ribera, and of Francesco Solimena, as well as the statues of Cosimo Fansaga. Although Brescian by birth, Fansaga lived so long and did so much work in Naples that he may be ranked among the principal artists whom the seventeenth cen- tury covered with favours. It is true that in the de- velopment of Naples this century cannot be said to have brought any decorative formula completely different from those spread abroad there by the Renaissance. But, unhappily for those noble and THE TRIUMPH OF THE BAROQUE 119 earlier documents, the decorations of the seventeenth century were applied as much as possible not only to hide, but to efface, even to destroy the noblest traces of their predecessors. So it was, in the rage for repairs, encouraged especially by the Regent Barrionuevo and which he preached like a new crusade, that in the Carmelite church, in San Pietro a Maiella, even in the Duomo, in San Lorenzo, San Domenico, and San Eligio, to say nothing of the most notable of the Angevin churches, was accomplished the disappearance of the Gothic ogees and the round arches of the Renaissance, the fine double windows, the severe altars, even the pavements with bands ornamented with blazons or with portrait and symbolical figures of which the humble but learned ceramist of Umbria and of Tus- cany had woven, so to speak, their multi-coloured and brilliant carpets in the suggestive shadows of the chapels. Suddenly everything was changed. Here, where had been the bare, grey stone or frescoes, ap- peared stuccoes, volutes, abundant ornaments, and marble draperies. No longer did the fine stems of slender columns rise toward the vaulted ceiling and meet it with a light capital that seemed like the chalice of a flower. More than twice as big, the columns were covered with garlands and flutings, while stucco cor- nices rested upon the ogees of the windows and upon the lintels reinforced and covered with roses. A band 120 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES of plump angels comes flying in from all sides, forming groups in every corner, creeping over the pediments and seeming to fill the nave and the transepts with the flutter of their wings and their silvery laughter. The vaulting disappears under a coffered sky or becomes an oval or a square flat background, in either case, covered with anecdotal paintings. Our feet no longer stub against the rude blazoned stones which formerly covered the tombs. Upon the smooth and even pave- ment, arranged for the most delicate step, are bril- liantly polished and multi-coloured marbles, spread out in large and exuberant designs. Our attention, claimed on all sides by such abundant and varied de- coration, had no time to fix itself; statues, mausoleums, pictures, medallions, rich lamp holders, enormous, sculptured candelabra, precious and triumphal altars, balusters leave us nothing to do but to gaze in an ecstasy of wonder at such lavish riches. And what name can be given to our sensations when the majestic organs, over doors surcharged with angels and radia- tions, send their solemn voices forth through their gilded tubes, seeming to awaken all these treasures and set them in motion?" Signer Giacomo, this epic singer of Naples con- cludes: ' The seventeenth century in Italy will mark the metamorphose of every Parthenopean monument." THE TRIUMPH OF THE BAROQUE Nevertheless, here before our eyes stands the Castel dell' Ovo, a military citadel constructed according to all the rules and with all the talents of art not only respected, but extended by the viceroy Pedro de To- ledo. Here, in 1600, Domenico Fontana built the large Royal Palace whose interior is often so serious and in such good taste as to put the churches to shame. Here is the Palazzo Maddaloni, by Fansaga a severe and honest work. Here, too, is the Museum, also by Fansaga. Such works are far from announcing the weakness of an art. Did Naples call a halt, then, in the decadent metamorphoses ? How are we to believe that, in those days of scant liberty, that the paint- ers had the faculty of smothering their voices without ever having silence imposed upon them. Is it not possible that in two hundred and fifty years there might have been a viceroy who loved something else than painting? Fontana and Fan- saga are here to demonstrate that the genius of architecture still lived. It was used, too, but in secular building: which is, perhaps, the secret of things. It seems that there was a sort of settled pur- pose, a calculated favour, in fact a political system on the subject. Let us read this short history, as beautiful as a legend. If we read it well, we shall understand it better than by twenty pages of argument. 122 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES In 1646 the Duke of Arcos was named Viceroy of Naples, in the place of the Duke of Medina who was recalled to Spain. As soon as he returned home, the Duke of Medina, associating himself with his brother- in-law, John of Braganza of Portugal, fomented a revolution in his province, seeking to make it inde- pendent of the Kingdom of Spain. He used the wealth he had amassed in the course of his viceroyship to create a personal position for himself in his own country. That has ever been the whole policy of viceroys. The monarchy sends them to raise all the wealth possible out of the viceroyalty, riches destined to serve the ambitions of the king. The viceroy raises twice the amounts asked of him, putting the extra half aside for his own interests when his term of office shall be expired. Rome had her proconsuls; Spain had her viceroys; they were alike in all essential characteris- tics. The cleverest representative of the Spanish crown in Naples was he who could send the largest subsidies to Madrid and knew how to keep enough for himself. The Neapolitan people were squeezed to the point of exhaustion. If they cried out, they were massacred somewhat and visited by the clergy who preached to them assurances of divine mercy and eternal life. The cleverness of the viceroy was fur- ther employed in making a satisfactory division of substantial emoluments with the bishop and the THE TRIUMPH OF THE BAROQUE 123 monks who employed the arts of persuasion they were such masters of in the renouncement of this world's goods. Then, in 1646, Arcos arrived. He levied the im- posts rigorously, but was not slow in finding them insufficient. Must he not convince Madrid that it had made a good choice in sending him ? Why not re- turn the collections of the present taxes in full and invent new ones ? It was only a matter of establishing them cleverly, at the right moment. Naples was bubbling just then with a quarrel between the nobility and the clergy over Saint Januarius. The attention of the country is distracted, was Arcos's argument; let us profit by the fact. He struck with a tax on the food the only food almost of the people: their fruit. But, to the Duke's great surprise, the people would not accept the charge. They protested, and, being in good humour over the affair of Saint Januarius, they began their campaign with sorry jokes and comic songs. Then they warmed up enough to press rather strongly around the duke in his carriage, and at length they set fire to the vessel that was about to sail away to Spain with the money that had been paid in advance on the account of the new tax by the farmers-general. Not a boat of Santa Lucia would go out to the aid of the burning vessel. Now, really, Arcos could not let such a form of the 124 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES protest go unpunished. But whom to strike was the question. Evidently the thoughtless populace had been put up to it by some wiser heads than theirs, the leader must be either of the party of the clergy or of that of the nobility. Was there not a quarrel between the two at that moment ? Having no mind to lay the blame on the clergy, the viceroy arrested the Duke of Maddaloni, the head of the nobility. The result was, of course, that the Neapolitan nobility was thereby instituted protector of the people. The people, however, were riot overcome by the honour. Wanting a chief from their own ranks, they chose a young fish- seller from Amalfi, Tommaso Aniello. Masaniello, famous for his gift of gab and for his gaiety, had a wife, from Pozzuoli, who, one day, tried to smuggle some flour into Naples in the form of a baby in swaddling clothes. Her fraud detected, she was put into prison- and Masaniello had to sell his boat and his nets to get her out. From that day, he neither fished nor sang any more; but he talked and his popular eloquence soared into revolutionary imprecations. The people pressed about him on the street corners, growing more and more enthusiastic over his fiery speech, further animated by his worthy efforts to preclude any possibility of disappointing himself or his brothers, until, and at no great length of time, either, the resist- ance had a leader and could move. THE TRIUMPH OF THE BAROQUE 125 The day of the Feast of Carmel, the fermenting crowd gathered in the square of the Mercato Vecchio, there where centuries before Conradin was beheaded by the order of the Angevin conqueror Charles I., where the gibbet was standing, where the convent of the Carmelites still extends its walls of a veritable fortress. With Aniello at its head, the crowd moved on to the Ducal Palace before which it raised a hubbub against Arcos. The Duke understood the matter ac- cording to his lights: Maddaloni was in prison; the Archbishop could not be other than satisfied, since he was in the way of having his dispute over Saint Januarius argued out with Maddaloni; therefore the people must be the instrument of the party of the imprisoned Duke, the nobility. This is what Arcos made clear to the Archbishop who, nevertheless, re- mained prudent, waiting to see what was to come. Probably, he said, the effervescence would subside of itself. No doubt it would have done so if news had not arrived from Palermo that the people there had revolted to so good purpose that they had forced the viceroy to abolish the impost. Again the Neapolitan populace rallied around Masaniello who had become a decided force in the city. But intrigue was at work. For whose benefit was he working; was he going to work for the clergy, for the viceroy, for the nobility? At first Aniello had thought only of working for him- 126 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES self and for his brothers, the poor and overtaxed Nea- politan ; but by this time he is closely surrounded. The 7th of July a convoy of fruit arrives from Pozzuoli. The collection officers stop it, claiming the tax. Among the scolding contadini is the brother-in-law of Masaniello. He overturns his entire cart of figs, say- ing, "I give them with a vengeance!" Stones begin to fly, the city is in riot. Masaniello runs to the Mer- cato and sings a revolutionary hymn which he ends with the lawful cry: "Long live the King. Death to bad government." And, at the same time the bells of Carmel ring out the signal of insurrection. The Duke breathed more freely. From the moment that revolution comes out openly, there is no more to fear from it. When a people respect their king, they respect, their passions having cooled, his representative. Yet here was a procession, preceded by children carry- ing black flags, and led by the Carmelites, advancing toward the palace under the windows of which Masani- ello and his brothers shout death and brandish the unclean bread they must eat for nourishment. Arcos appears upon his balcony, and all the rotten tomatoes of Naples make an aureole about his head. Pale with rage and fear, he flees while the people force the doors and sack the palace. Then the convent in which Arcos finds refuge was besieged. The Archbishop saves him by talking to the people, always respectful before the THE TRIUMPH OF THE BAROQUE 127 minister of God, long enough for him to get away and hide at San Elmo. There, under shelter, he organizes his repression and lays his plot. In the meantime the people named Masaniello their captain general. But they were pretending to act always in the name of the King. In sacking the palace did they not respect the throne room and the portrait of Charles V. ? Masaniello proclaimed his resolution to keep always within the law. To protest their loy- alty has always been the absurdity of revolutionaries. Arcos put forward the Archbishop, and at the end of a few days the revolution became royal and episcopal against the nobility. It was turned to the profit of the King, thanks to the Church. Masaniello might organize his men, arm and lead them ; he might appear on his tribune, red cap upon his head, legs and feet bare, striped drawers upon his thighs, that is in the national costume; he might punish with justice, recompense with equity, and fix the price of bread. But he and his cause were lost, for his pur- pose was to keep within legal right. Did he not go so far as to ask his brothers to disarm because the Duke had agreed to all their demands ? They cried out that they had no confidence in Arcos's promises. He was scandalized by such distrust. Yet to Arcos's mind he went too fast, and an attack directed against him rearoused all his fear. 128 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES Arcos retired to Benevento, leaving the field free to the Archbishop who undertook to bring the affair to a close. Naples was then in the hands of the priests who smother the revolution in embracing it. Masaniello, the poor fisherman, was dressed up in clothes embroid- ered with silver, and by a symbolical act which would have been dangerous if the Archbishop had not known his people, a gold chain was placed around his neck. Thus consecrated by the Church, Masaniello became the defendant of order, agent of the King whose pater- nal care he proclaimed continually. He was useful to calm his brothers, and when he was no longer needed he could be suppressed. The poor fellow writhed in his contradiction. He had been persuaded that his duty was to make the King respected, hence law and order must be maintained, even with severity. But his brothers implored him to have pity. Had he not signed a treaty with the Duke, through the intervention of the Archbishop, delegating to him the power in the name of the King ? But had he not promised to deliver his brothers? He was torn between rage and love. One day he dealt out punishment implacably ; the next he tore off his tinsel and declared that he would wear nothing but his fisherman's cap and drawers. Arcos and the Archbishop saw the madness that was coming over him and knew that they had nothing to do but wait the propitious moment. THE TRIUMPH OF THE BAROQUE 129 Crushed with honours, frightened with responsi- bilities, torn between loyalty and revolution, Aniello mounted the pulpit of San Gennaro and talked and talked, since every one so loved to hear him! He preached appeasement and good feeling. Then, in the midst of all that tenderness, he had a gleam of reason ; he shouted, " We are abused, made use of, I am but the laughing-stock of our enemies! I die assassinated!" He was carried away in his delirium. Another push and the affair was over. He was sent back into the pulpit, almost by force, and there another access of madness finished him. The sbirri, waiting close by, sprang upon him and killed him. The people, un- grateful as ever, had no thought for what their Tommaso had been to them, only cherishing bitterness against Aniello the friend of their tyrants. The clergy dwelt upon his severity as dictator. The next day the people offered his head to the viceroy who went to the cathedral to thank God and the Archbishop who had worked so well. At Masartiello's funeral the clergy, the nobility, and Arcos rivalled one another in the honours they paid him for having led the revolu- tion to such an absolute failure. And then the taxes were collected. If you want to feel something of the vibrations of the Neapolitan soul, the childish soul of which Masaniello was the type, you must not be afraid of walking amid 1 30 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES the filth of the Mercato Vecchio. Here Conradin perished, here the gibbet was in use, here Masaniello talked. Here rises the Castel del Carmine, the fortress which was once the convent ally of the people. The great sordid piazza, or largo, as they say in Naples, is still surrounded by high pink and yellow tenements hung with rags. On all sides little streets open into it, alleys into which only foreigners dare to trust them- selves: the Neapolitans avoid them to this day. Loitering about here, how well we learn to know Masaniello and his brothers: poor fellows who have nothing in the world, stripped of judgment cleaner than of anything else, supremely simple, childlike, whose revolutions begin with some sort of farce and lead to upholding the popular respect for the estab- lished power, the naive people who expect to realize such a contradiction as a legal revolution. They are not a fierce people, their needs are so few. They dine on an orange and sleep in their largo. God protects them ; they tell Him'so until one is tired of hearing them. They believe in everything and in everybody, turn by turn ; in the Duke, the Bishop, and in Masaniello. The Bishop has the greatest prestige. Was he not able to conquer Tommaso himself? The Bishop made a bar- gain with the King. " Give me money," he said, "and I will give you the people." The King accepted. The Bishop's promise of paradise enabled him to deliver THE TRIUMPH OF THE BAROQUE 131 the souls. The wandering sheep returned to the fold. God blessed them. The fold, of course, is the Church, and for consolation it was made pleasanter to rest in. And what about funerary monuments ? Undoubtedly they are sad and possibly perilous. One never knows to what point a dead body may become dangerous. You know, too, that it is really painful to look from some dingy hole at a magnificent church with splendid portal and decorated walls. Let us, therefore, con- centrate our splendours around the altars! So our men will be filled with peaceful sentiments from the moment they enter the church and will come at once to submit themselves to the Divine Will, and not for revolt ; to implore, not to demand. As they approach their eyes will behold all the shining gold, all the deco- rations ; their eyes will blink, overcome with wonder, they will fall upon their knees before this brilliance so far beyond their reach. Then from the pulpit will fall these words: "God opens His house to us, my broth- ers. His magnificent temple, worthy of His own splendour, is your dwelling. You are His children. He gives you His treasures. Come one, come all. Rest from your miseries upon His bosom. God's house is yours !" At home in God's house ! What a thought ! It was no small matter to embellish this house, whither the people were called to pass their days, to 1 32 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES give themselves up to participating in a luxury that they could never create for their own use, to possess it, in fact. Their hovels were wretched, but the Church which God shared with His children was so beautiful ! Never could they have enough of the gold, of the marbles, of the pictures of beautiful women, nude or draped with silk, just, so the people said, like those of the palace. The mastery over the people was there, in the church, where the appeased lazzarone, rocked in his sleep, resigned himself to all that was decided upon for the glory of the throne and of the altar, all that was arranged to bleed him between the viceroy and the Bishop, in their mighty palaces, as sumptuous as temples, over there behind the tow- ers of Castle Nuovo and Castel dell' Ovo and under the cannons of San Elmo. What profit did the painters gain from the magnifi- cent field thus given them to cultivate, for the honour of their art which Raphael was at that moment carry- ing to the supreme rank? San Martino is going to furnish the answer to this second term of our problem. In the days in which we have been going about the city there has not been an hour when, raising our noses, we have not found the hill of San Elmo in front of us. From everywhere one sees the sharp mass projecting towards the sea, a sort of corner that the mountain THE TRIUMPH OF THE BAROQUE 133 sticks into the heart of the human invasions. Never- theless man has climbed it and settled upon it. At first for pleasure: the Angevins had a shooting-box there. Robert the Wise was persuaded by his son, young Charles the Illustrious, Duke of Calabria, the father of Joan I., to give the lodge and its surroundings to the Carthusians. Robert then built a little at one side and above the convent, the fortress which made Naples almost impregnable. Seen from below, citadel and monastery form but one imposing whole whose boldness is greatly admired by puerile men. The Carthusian monastery we see, however, is not that of Robert the Wise, but Fansaga's master work, accom- plished in the first half of the seventeenth century. After trying to browse over barrens, what a joy it is to come upon pasturage ! In the city there is not a build- ing of this epoch in which we can see anything but what it lacks. Here Fansaga conceived and executed a complete work, a work done for himself as much as for the painters. That Lombard had been wisely trained. To this day his edifice may be taken for a model. The general arrangement shows wonderful logic and cleverness. Courtyards, corridors, sanctu- aries, cells, cloisters, dependencies; all are arranged with the truest taste and most practical sense of fitness. Of course Fansaga had to hide the architectural beauties of the church; the painters would share I 34 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES nothing with him and what they abandoned to him was merely interior decoration destined to show off their work to better advantage. In the halls he was freer so long as he was careful to save ceilings for the painters to cover. Around the cloister the cells, libraries, and assembly rooms are arranged with judg- ment, plenty of space and light. In the courtyards there are porticoes both sober and gay, with terraces here and there and, above all, the admirable cloister, not great certainly, but with a charm, a freshness, a purity of grace which attains almost unto veritable eloquence. We have only to see this cloister to be sure that Fansaga was a master. He who, in his youth, had seen Pavia and all the works of Amadeo, could give rein to his inspiration here with no need either to copy or to cede to others. He understood the sky and the landscape, the immutable sun and the tormented earth. At Parthenope he built a convent which could not offend the most delicate paganism. Today a Neapolitan museum is installed in the monastic halls. The Museo San Martino is the Carna- valet of Naples. One can pass endless hours there questioning little things which talk so freely to him who knows how to make them speak. There are relics and documents innumerable. Murat's cloak embroidered with bees near King Bomba's kepi, a little too near it, in fact. The tapir masque of Ferdi- THE TRIUMPH OF THE BAROQUE 135 nand, repulsive in its beastiality and its ugliness, might pass for that of his father Charles III., if, farther on, in the coarse engravings we did not see the eyes that show us the difference between the father and the son. Here, too, is the worm-eaten hat of Cardinal Rufo who caused the abominable massacre of 1799 when the Parthenopean Republic disappeared. See the beauti- ful and melancholy lance carried by Charles III. from Portici to Santa Lucia, the old coach which Gari- baldi mounted, in 1860, when he benevolently gave to Savoy a kingdom of which he was the master to keep for himself or to sell against the deliverance of Rome. Who will ever sufficiently praise the personal abnega- tion, the patriotic sacrifice, and the deep foresight of Garibaldi? We may gaze upon souvenirs of all the victims of the Ferdinands and the Francescos, works of the Neapolitan industries, little articles of daily life, arms and jewels, clothes, certain of which belonged to Spanish nobles, and an infinite number of pictures. Here is illustrated all the life of Naples and Southern Italy with its manners and its costumes. Among all these portraits of conspicuous people is a Ferdinand in a high hat and a Carolina with corkscrew curls which will strike you with repulsive realism. By examining the pictures of Naples, you may pass from one dynasty to another in the history of the city. As we look upon Vesuvius, in a childlike representation of the terror it i 3 6 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES inspired in irruption we feel a more eloquent cry of the souls of the frightened people than any view of ac- tual disaster. Here, too, are all the scenes of country life: thefesta, the harvest, pilgrimages, and tarantella. Everything is classified in perfect order and taste, with method and science. The Museum of San Martino represents the very core of Neapolitan life. In its halls only can one understand the impressions received in the streets. These thousand bibelots are the beads of the rosary we have strung in the alleys of San Biagio and the Mercato Vecchio. We now see the life of Naples unfold continuously and logically. From Pompeii, whose streets irresistibly call up Palaeopolis, to the present quarter of Pendino, to the radiant Chiaia the Neapolitan soul is seen without the solu- tion of continuity and by its popular expressions, by its most intimate relics. The entrance to the church is most astutely man- aged. One comes to it from behind. First there is a sombre passage, then a hall, a sort of chapter-room decorated with woodwork below and frescoes above. Farther on is the Treasure-room, empty today, where we see Ribera's masterpiece, a nobly tragic Descent from the Cross, a work of excellent realism in spite of its extremes and of really meritoriously audacious foreshortening. On the ceiling is a Judith by Gior- dano of which it is said with an amazement surely not Alinari The Descent from the Cross (Riberaj, Church of San Martino, Naples Alinari The Presepe, Museum of San Martino, Naples Interior of the Church of San Martino, Naples View of Naples from San Martino THE TRIUMPH OF THE BAROQUE 137 caused by admiration that it was painted in twenty- four hours. Tintoretto also painted quickly, but he painted well, too. Time has nothing to do with the case in painting. We would have given Giordano ten years if only he might have succeeded ! In the sacristy are some frescoes by Stanzioni and Arpino. Now you see the little door and have the whole church, the high nave bordered with chapels between the pillars. The pillars, all covered with multi-coloured marbles, mount to the sunken cornice carved and overcharged and prolonged to enclose the lunettes which Fansaga de- signed as so many frames for the sunlight. Even this, flooding the church, makes in itself a picture which rivals the beauty of the paintings. Every- thing converges toward the glory which is made of rays of stucco gilded upon a pavement of green, red, and white marbles. Ribera here appropriated the best part of the church, the vaulting, which he shared with Lanfranco. He owed him something for his aid at the time of the expulsion of Domenichino. Lanfranco had the Apostles, and Ribera making sure of the best for himself, kept the Prophets which he placed in the pen- dentives, giving them the effect of gems in their setting. Besides these there are the Stanzioni pictures with the beautiful attitudes, more gentle and graceful work than that of his master Ribera, and so clearly influenced by Van Dyck that he unites all the partisans of the I 3 8 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES so-called Flemish-Neapolitan school. In the choir is a Washing of the Feet by Caracciolo, pupil of the Car- racci, a Last Supper by Stanzioni, the company stand- ing like that at Urbino by Justus Van Gent of which Stanzioni must have heard and whose audacity no doubt pleased Ribera's disciple. He cannot have understood anything of it but the astonishing effect. There is another Supper by Ribera, some frescoes by Arpino, and, crowding everything, breaking the con- tortions, taking down the swellings, cutting through soap-bubble clouds and blowing upon legs and arms of gold-beater's skin is a Nativity by Guido, calm, pure, its colour warm and deep. Yet Guido Reni was not a great master; he was only honest and simple. Never- theless, with possible exception of Ribera's Descent from the Cross, out of all this mass, Guido's work is about all that clings to the memory. What is the use of going into details ! It is not the traveller's part to assign places, single out preferences, or distribute prizes. He has only to feel beauty when there is any, to co-ordinate his impressions to draw some general instruction from them. Scattered throughout the city and reunited upon the vaulting and the walls of San Martino we find all those who, like poverty upon a poor world, were thrown upon Naples at the beginning of the seventeenth century in order to exploit the social situation which the Spanish THE TRIUMPH OF THE BAROQUE ' 139 regime had just created. Here they are : Luigi Roder- ico, Corenzio, Santacroce, Spadaro, Finoglia, Gar- giulio, Pacecco de Rosa, Caracciolo, Falcone, Santa- fede, Imparato, Arpino, Stanzioni, Lanfranco, up to Calabrese and Salvator Rosa. And I almost forgot to say that the whole band is bought. What a shopful! Ribera bosses them all. A beggar as a child, he was determined to eat where he had known hunger. On the death of Caravaggio, in 1610, he left Rome where his comrades, Raphael's assistants, used to throw him their bread crusts. He had heard that work was to be had down here on the shore of the Tyrrhenian Gulf. He hastened to it, and his genius as an organizer won for him a commanding place at once. Is it possible to think of work done with conscientiousness by this crowd hungry for bread and for everything else ? To work was to paint, and they painted. There was so much to do! Was there any time to think? What did the Spaniard want? Brilliancy, shine, dust in the eyes, above all something dazzling. Ribera and his crowd turned out the thing desired in abundance. Look at it as long as you like, you will not see either a pose or a movement in all of this painted world, dressed and undressed, which defines a character. Is an arm raised, if it were a leg it would be just as good. Does a man smile, he might as well cry. Is he draped in yellow, blue would have been quite as fitting to the 1 4 o A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES anecdote. Is he at prayer, his companions challenge him to fight. If he is seated upon a cloud, for all that he is doing, he might better be on a bench. Nothing is anywhere because it must be. Everything is re- duced to brutal effect, thrown by the chance of a hurried brush. Nothing has been asked but richness. To be sure, Stanzioni has shown some audacity in his Last Supper, but only to arouse astonishment, not to the better express his conception of that scene. In his Washing of the Feet Caracciolo does not see the lines of beautiful nudes, but only the well-broken folds of his draperies. Giordano applied himself to awaken astonishment by see-sawing architecture in which he mingled all the allusions he had been able to gather upon Anjou and Aragon. When all this crowd re- membered Caravaggio, by means of Ribera, it was to imitate his vulgarity, not his realism, his brutality, not his vigour, his anger, not his passion. From 1600 to about 1680, Naples became the do- main of contractors of painting by the mile, by the ton. Giordano's Judith, painted in two days, is the ideal work amongst all. In two days! That would produce one hundred and eighty pictures at least in a year, and each one rushing headlong for first place, to pick up the crumbs that Ribera scattered gener- ously and skilfully. Suddenly, however, when the orgy was at its height, a spectre appeared. A poor THE TRIUMPH OF THE BAROQUE 141 little man, very ugly to see, modest, loving his art for itself and not for its profits ; he wanted work, too, in the city offering hospitality to painting. He asked for a small place at the banquet to which he would bring, perhaps, a little moderation, some reason. What a clamour he raised! Did not the crowd know that Domenico Zampieri against whom the friends of Lan- franchi had already had such trouble to defend them- selves in Rome ? They had been so tranquil in Rome until he came to stir up everything. By whom was he advertising himself, anyway ? With Carracci and Correggio. Well, Ribera, too, has seen Correggio and Caracciolo had seen Carracci. He need not make so much of that! What had he done himself in Rome? The frescoes of the Valle, of San Luigi, the Saint Gerome and the radiant Diana. They were sincere and studied art, nothing bloated, nothing to "hit you in the eye" about that, was it the same he thought to introduce into Naples? A shiver of fear ran through the veins of the painting crowd : if Domenico succeeded, they were dead men. Viceroy, bishop, nobles, people, once they had seen this Domenichino's work, who could believe they would want any more of Ribera's? Domenichino's triumph would be Ribera's fall: no more bread, no more Naples. Lanfranchi knew how it would be and hastened down 1 to help to crush the kill-trade. i 4 2 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES What happened was abominable. No martyrdom was ever carried on with greater cruelty. Guido Reni had forewarned his friend Domenichino of what awaited him in Naples. The gentle Zampieri would not believe it. Those young men, were they not a little bit painters? Well, then, when they saw his efforts and the conscience he put into his work, they would be disarmed, would they not? Anyway one must work! He had been offered the commission of painting the frescoes of San Gennaro, could he refuse it? The answer he heard was in howls of rage. He went to work, nevertheless, but found himself obliged to paint with his dagger at his side. What he did by day was wiped out by night. Ashes were mixed with his tempera to become apparent only when dry in great, ugly cracks in his beautiful work. Then, as it hap- pened, Vesuvius had an eruption ; the people, put up to it with diabolical purpose, declared that it was a sign of God's displeasure with the pictures representing their pet saint and rushed upon them and their author. Domenichino escaped, and a certain calm was restored. Unable to conceive either the deviltry or the ignorance pitted against him, Domenichino then believed the excitement over and conscientiously returned to his work and to his assassination. We followed this cru- cifixion when we were in Rome. Nowhere but at Naples can we appreciate the horror of it. To feel it THE TRIUMPH OF THE BAROQUE 143 we must go to the Duomo, after having seen the pic- tures of San Martino and all the other churches, and look at the frescoes and the panels that Domenichino was making there when they killed him. What reason they had to tremble! Even to this day, it seems as if Naples makes an effort to hide Domenichino. His panels above the altars of Saint Januarius are scarcely visible behind the jeweller's work and the paper flowers. One is obliged to look a long time before seeing a very little; but what one sees at length is true beauty, the probity, the sincerity of art, the radiant truth of movement, the perfection of pose, and all the moderation and control of the brush. Domenichino brought to Naples that which the Ri- bera crowd was resolved never to give the city. Three generations of painters would scarcely be able to do all there was to do if they should work as he worked, and they wanted the entire harvest themselves. So, they cried, "Let us kill him," calling the stone-masons to join them in the murder. The tribes of Picchiati, Gisolfi, Cavagni, all had as much interest as the painters in the perversion of the Neapolitan taste and of the rabble of daubers and apprentices about them. It was to be free of any better influence which might interfere with their doing what we have just seen scattered throughout Naples and brought together in San Martino that they poisoned the painter of San 144 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES Nilo, the immortal realist of the Diana of the Villa Borghese! Surely in this we touch the rock-bottom of villainy. But shall we say, What, here are six centuries through which we have looked in vain for a Neapolitan school ; from the time of the Angevin Gothic we have looked in vain for a personal expression of art in the Kingdom of Naples, and when, at length, we find it we villify it. We might answer that the fault is the school's and not its judges' if it is found unworthy; but before that we should answer that in no sense could the Ribera mob lay any pretensions to the name of school. Ri- bera syndicated and directed a troop of workmen banded together to exploit a political and social sys- tem; he did not preside over the unfolding of a common ideal. This painting cannot even find shelter under the mantle of the Baroque. False and mean as was the idea of the Baroque, even that is absent here. In the architectural Baroque there was a general concep- tion and, though we must condemn it, we must also understand it, whether we speak of the sculptural Baroque of Bernini or that of the pupils of Mazzoni. Painting in Naples was not a school, but a phenomenon taken up as it was by young men who wielded the brush not by vocation, but by appetite, because it was "good times" for the man who could daub paint. Ribera may have had technical skill, Giordano may THE TRIUMPH OF THE BAROQUE 145 have had invention, Stanzioni may have had a certain sweetness of expression, Arpino elegance; those qual- ities were put out to commercial service, not held at the command of inspiration. Bernini and his follow- ing created space which, indeed, is something. Ribera and his battalion created the pictorial industry. They worked to eat, which may be honourable if one does not butter one's bread by assassination. There is nothing artistic in that. Let Naples call them the commercial school if she wants to, but not a school of the art of painting. A school? To create one the troop had but to do what we were doing before we left San Martino. Un- der the balcony where we were taking a breath of air, Naples lies along the edge of the blue water between her two capes, before the radiant and solemn Vesuvius. Over the water is the great mauve arch of Capri, like a phantom that must be gliding by. Behind are the high hills of the Apennines, Capodimonte and its foliage, the mountains of Caserta, and all the generous Campania, ample as it is and with a noble impressive- ness equal to the line of the sea and of the promonto- ries, a worthy sister of the Gulfs of Baia and Sorrento. To this spectacle, unequalled in the world, the palpitat- ing soul of the beautiful, so majestic in its simplicity, so full of Greek feeling, charged with memories that must stir in the minds of the most ignorant beholders I 4 6 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES to this Ribera obstinately shut his eyes, and took even greater care not to show it to his accomplices, his workmen. They might have been moved by it, per- haps. Nor did the Riberaites ever stop before Naples itself and her animated life, in which such an artist as Domenichino met, at every step, the movement he sought for his realism and which he turned into poetry, this Naples so vibrating with the very colours and the passions a painter must long to fix upon his walls! To the Ribera manufacturing company, looking about was lost time: they were in such haste to paint what- ever fancy suggested behind their shut eyes, inventing yellows and legs according to the reds or the arms nearest them, combining upon the spur of the moment or the mood, never according to the demands of the chosen subject but, then, the subject, too, was a mere matter of chance. A school? How much more likely its existence would have been if the Ribera crowd had lingered in the churches on Christmas day as we linger this after- noon in the lower hall of the Museum ! They would have met with a thousand examples of the veritable masterpieces of the popular instinct, models always posing under the eyes of those who can respond to the expression of the sentiments of others. The Neapoli- tan school? It is wholly, so far as its power exists, in this Christ-in-the-Manger of San Martino, like all the THE TRIUMPH OF THE BAROQUE 147 others with which the city was filled at every Christ- mas. The expression of the Neapolitan school was, and is, in the mountainous landscapes, in the porches, such as we see in the Tuscan and Umbrian frescoes, to shelter the Magi and the shepherds ; it is in the paths along which descend the popular and triumphant pro- cessions ; it is in the changeable colours of the contadini costumes, of the men with pointed caps, in the oxen, the asses, the sheep, the geese by the ponds, the climb- ing goats, the bemired carts, the sleeping shepherds, the chestnut trees, the evergreen oaks, and all that belongs to field and farm appropriated for the setting of the Divine Child held in outstretched arms. In these small wax figures dressed in the most surprising costumes and the most perfect, too, since they are an expression of the obscure genius of the race, is the germ of all that a school can aspire to express ; that is to say, a conception of the life, a personal expression of the visible world and the hidden world of the heart. The Neapolitan soul lives in the presepes those wonderful cribs for which Naples is famous with a vigour, a simplicity, a charm, and true pictorial instinct never equalled. Poor Naples! She possesses a unique landscape of such grandeur that before it the most unimaginative of men feel themselves transported, grown greater, purified. She possesses the soul of a brilliant person- I 4 8 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES ality, whose exuberance must have struck the blindest of beholders. And when a generation came to her which had the means of expressing its impassioned manifestations, that generation systematically turned its back on her. Poor Naples! Too beautiful, ex- citing too much desire to possess her, smothered in thanks for the gifts she dispensed, trampled under- foot every day by all the avaricious hordes that were attracted by her charms and who never found peace but as a means of exploiting her anew ! And we, the moment we step out on her balconies, look at her with eyes full of admiration, we bow before her majesty, forgetting all the bands of evil-doers, condottieri, or painters, all disappear from our forgiving memories when beautiful Naples smiles. Besides, she holds in her bosom, a reparation for all the wrongs she has suffered in the work of Domenichino, which alone sur- vives all the rubbish that has stunted her artistic growth and marred her virgin beauty. Fifth Day THE PORCELAIN CABINET Naples \inder tKe Bourbons HE War of the Spanish Succession brought a change in the nationality of the viceroys, as in the foreign sover- eignty. The condition of the king- dom, however, remained the same. Then, in 1734, after twenty-seven years of Austrian dominion, Naples found her independence, lost two hundred years before. It was brought to her by a 149 150 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES Spanish prince who had resolved to govern her on his own account and for the benefit of the Kingdom of Naples, not for the profit of the King of Spain, al- though he expected to shelter himself well under the strength of his father. Don Carlos, second son of Philip V. de Bourbon and of Elizabeth Farnese, was sent, in 1732, to Parma to occupy the duchy belonging to his mother. That journey was but a stage on his way to Naples, to- wards which he set forth the following year. The Infante, aged twenty-seven, arrived at Naples and, almost without protest from Imperial representa- tives, made his entrance through the Porta Capuana to revive the good days of the Magnanimous. A collar of diamonds and rubies offered opportunely to San Gennaro dictated his course to the Cardinal Arch- bishop Pignatelli. During the joyous outburst of the people, Don Carlos read an edict from his father ceding to him his rights over the Two Sicilies. It only re- mained to take Sicily, which resisted; but the thing was done the following year. Don Carlos de Bourbon was King of Naples while waiting until he became Charles III. of Spain. How was he to be numbered as a King Charles of Naples? The matter was somewhat complicated for his sub- jects, at least, since a king signs his own name only in its briefest form. Was it not necessary to count the THE PORCELAIN CABINET 151 Charleses from the national Neapolitan point of view ? In that case the last was Charles III. of Durazzo, but that would be, on the one hand, connecting the new monarch too directly with the Angevins, the great enemies of the Spanish dynasty, and, on the other hand, showing too great disdain towards the descend- ants of the great Emperor, Charles V., for there had been three emperors bearing the name of Charles in the time that the Austrian viceroys had governed Naples. (That is why the Germans and some others, perhaps, sometimes give to Carlos the number VII.) In Sicily he was the fifth of his name, because the Sicil- ians accepted Charles of Anjou as the first, and recog- nized the three emperors. After all the talk, however, Carlos was not pushed to the extremity of a choice, since he became King of Spain, third of his name, and that style remained in use in Naples and Sicily, for during the long minority of his son and successor, Ferdinand, nothing was done by the regency without the sanction of the chief of the Bourbons across the Mediterranean. It in no wise obscures the interesting figure of Carlos to set up beside him that of his Minister, later Presi- dent of the Council of the Regency of Ferdinand. Carlos had brought with him from Parma, Bernardo Tanucci, then a young Tuscan thirty-six years of age, Professor of common law at the University of Pisa one 152 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES of the most enlightened men of his epoch. A French traveller says : "The King gives to the Queen all the time that he passes at the palace. His mornings are occupied with fishing, his afternoons with shooting, the intervening hours are passed in council. When he is in Naples, he crosses the city on a gallop four times a day." There is no denying that he governed from his carriage and his bed, but Tanucci worked for him, and it is always a great proof of the sagacity of a king when, having chosen a wise minister, he allows him to act freely for the good of the kingdom. Tanucci had two great principles in his policy, as just as they were bold: to save Naples from the Church which was devouring it and to abolish feudalism. Carlos, with all his piety, consented to the undertaking of the enormous task of reconstructing the realm upon these principles. Car- los was a king who attended the church services in the robes of a canon, who washed the feet of the poor on Good Friday, who modelled the wax figures for the Christmas Presepe. Yet the same hand that shaped the holy wax signed, in 1741, a concordat by which he insisted that the clergy pay taxes, suppressed the right of refuge and jurisdiction. He, too, added his "or- ganic articles." By his own authority he limited the number of yearly ordinations, refused to concede any power to papal bulls not submitted to himself, op- Royal Palace, Naples Alinari The Chapel of the Royal Palace THE PORCELAIN CABINET 153 posed the acquisition of property by the clergy whose every licence he suppressed without pity. Against feudalism he established a cadastre, an official record of the ownership of land, and sup- pressed a number of the obligations of the contadini toward their landed proprietors. He reformed the tribunals, introducing into them some degree of equity. He ruled the expenses with severe economy. He opposed the introduction of the Inquisition, although he banished the Jews. Roads were made in Calabria, in Apulia, and in the Abruzzi. Carlos was an excellent King to whom Naples owed a social and political im- petus which half a century later made easy for Murat the task of introducing modern principles into the administration of the kingdom. In 1759 when Carlos was forty-three years old, his elder brother, the King of Spain, died without children, and he, the King of Naples, was called to mount the throne of his fathers. Nothing to regret had yet arisen in his government, but regrets over leaving it must have been many and deep: this beautiful kingdom, developing peacefully a regenerate and sufficiently prosperous people. But from the other side of the Mediterranean the future was even more smiling than the present in Naples. Don Carlos must have thought of the good hunting at La Granja and Aran- juez in contemplating the change in affairs that made 154 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES him King of Spain, successor of Charles V. and Philip II., sovereign of the old kingdom, rich with the trea- sure of America. . . . Carlos left Naples, October 6, 1759, with the dignity worthy of the occasion, his ship dressed with colours, and at the hour of sunset. He went away from the country stripped as a Saint John might have gone, leaving behind even a gold ring found at Pompeii where he had begun the excavations. He sailed away with seven of his children, leaving his third son at Naples as King, Ferdinand IV. (who fifty-six years later assumed the title of Fernand I. of the Two Sicilies), the oldest son being an idiot and the second heir to the crown of Spain. That second son was to become Carlos IV. who would return to die at Naples near the brother he loved and to whom he called in vain that he might die in his arms. Ferdi- nand, on a hunting trip at Portici, refused to open the letters which brought him news of his brother until the excursion was finished. Then, when the an- nouncement of his death was brought to Ferdinand, he said, "Since he is dead, let us go on with the hunt." It was like the exclamation of Louis XIV., his ances- tor, when he received the news that the Duchess de Bourgogne had had a miscarriage: "At any rate we can start for Marly!" The day of the funeral of Carlos, Ferdinand was still hunting at Portici. Later, Queen Catherine, Ferdinand's saintly wife, must also THE PORCELAIN CABINET 155 die vainly calling for her husband, who used to beat her, and who gave orders that he should not be awakened. Ferdinand had his love for hunting from his father, and it was favoured, probably, by Tanucci. Portici, Capodimonte, and Caserte were built for this sport. We owe to Portici the preservation of Pom- peii and Herculaneum, to Capodimonte and Caserte our debt is the awakening of the Neapolitan architectural art in the eighteenth century. By this time the great painting enterprise had no- thing more to exploit. One last church, indeed, re- mained almost intact, doubly annoying to the painter crowd, because it was decorated by Giotto. It had been easy to persuade Carlos to renew the traditions of the royal sepulchres at Santa Chiara, there where slept Robert the Wise, where, in time, must sleep the Bourbon kings who should die in Naples. Nor was it difficult to demonstrate that this sepulchre should be worthy of its illustrious occupants. So Santa Chiara was abandoned to the ravagers. Gilded pastry work and trellises replaced the bare ogees, and Conca, Muro, and Bonito were set to work to replace Giotto. Then the vandals were satisfied: comparison was no longer possible. Of the three ceilings, the least displeasing is Bonito's. The arms are always flourishing in the air, the loins, too. On the edge lies an ox and in the back- ground are hunting horns: it is, in fact, the halloo. I 5 6 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES One last mortal act of injustice, at the Annunziata, under the pretext of making it an hospice, and all is done. Then Muro and Bonito throw themselves upon the Royal Palace, last sigh of the Renaissance, built in 1600 by Fontana who had been called to Naples by the Viceroy Miranda. This palace replaced the an- cient one built by Pedro de Toledo whose modest square may still be seen on the map of Naples as it was at the end of the sixteenth century. Muro and Bonito and, after them, Conca and Solimena decked it out with their atrocities, disfiguring, but not destroying its majesty. Notwithstanding its amplitude, it is, even now, one of the noblest of the surviving riches of the ill-treated city. The staircase is so worthy of the most beautiful processions that we may well ask our- selves if the architects of the Hotel de Ville in Paris did not think of it in designing theirs. The chapel is one of the most imposing intimate interiors to be seen anywhere in the world. Vanvitelli, although occupied with modest work, was on the watch to renew the old traditions, to bring back to life art in architecture. He put his hand to the task in shutting the lower portico of the Royal Palace, in designing the Annunziata, in his plans for Caserte. During that same time Medrano built the San Carlo theatre and began Capodimonte, where Felice set up a porcelain factory, and tried to improve Alinari Interior of the Church of Santa Chiara, Naples Alinari The Convent of San Marcellino, Naples THE PORCELAIN CABINET 157 the stuccoes, the balconies, and the ceilings of the pre- ceding century. Vanvitelli, preparing himself for it at Caserte, accomplished in 1750 what may be considered his masterpiece, that little known wonder whose name is San Marcellino. Up there, on the old hill of Palaeopolis, on the peak above Retifilo, today the Corso Umberto, behind the new university to which it has become an annex, the convent of San Marcell : no marks the resurrection of a dying art. To reach it, you must climb the hill by the winding lanes which surround the university, pick your way through the alleys that still exist around the defunct Mezzocannone, the centre of the most im- pressive memories of ancient Naples. Mezzocannone is no more. To an old Neapolitan that name stands for everything : for the life of the people in their amaz- ing innocence and for the beautiful legends of the old statue of Alfonso II. of Aragon, placed, it is said, on the side where the Cumaeans wove the branches for their huts. But Mezzocannone is destined to become a beautiful avenue; it has been saved by the university, or, at least, by San Marcellino which, from its rocky summit dominates a new Neapolis. On the square opposite the church of Santi Severino e Sosio stands an open gate, beyond which is a cloister that reminds us of Fansaga, less charming than the cloister of San Martino, but with more bold- i 5 8 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES ness. A magnificent garden occupies the centre with great trees and an almost wild vegetation. The high buildings overhanging it are those of the old convent, today the university. The genius of Vanvitelli shines in his appropriation of the belvedere. The doorway is cut brusquely at the end of the cloister on the left. Passing through it, we step upon a large terrace overlooking the valley and the harbour. On the right the terrace ends at the convent, on the left at a chapel with a shining cupola, another Norman souvenir, and near it a mass of shelving roofs. The walls, no higher than a man, are cut in battlements, laughable Baroque crenellations that look as if the building were playing at being a fortress. Suddenly, on the right of the platform, we come upon a hole, some ten or twelve yards in diameter and at least twenty yards deep. Is it an empty well? Look into it and you find a cavity built (by Vanvitelli) with the imitations of three stories of windows, some small and rectangular, others large and rounded, with no decora- tion, nothing more than the general outlines; and away down at the bottom is a stocky little garden with babbling and jetting water. No one can fail to be impressed by the striking effect of this verdant cistern in the shadow of the great trees of the cloister, with the freshness and the murmur of water rising from its surprising depths. Why is it there? For no other THE PORCELAIN CABINET 159 reason than simply to be there : a fine bit of revenge on the architecture of Naples which for too long a time had shown no personality, had been a mere slave to the painters. Vanvitelli freed it. Since the painters had proved that they did not know how to do anything with their artistic monopoly, it was high time that each art take its own rank, and Vanvitelli built this pro- digiously useless thing to exist solely to give pleasure and a signal. The signal seems to have been understood. Sculp- ture, in its turn, awoke also. If we could meet all of the comparatively few travellers who have seen San Marcellino, we should not find one who had not been provoked to laughter or stood amazed in the small church of the Princes Sangri, commonly called the chapel of Sansevero, which stands behind San Domen- ico Maggiore. One may well laugh at it. Indeed, nothing could be more comic than the works there considered in themselves. The lesson taught by Ber- nini has not been lost here. The sculptors have taken up the notion of making paintings. That is not a crime in itself; the fault was to apply the processes of sculpture to painting, to try to make sculpture say what painting only can express. If ever that error was excusable, it was to be forgiven at Naples where paint- ing had led all consciences astray. We should laugh, too, if we did not cry, at this Man Freeing himself from 160 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES the Net of Error or Disillusion, as indeed it is, this moral revelation. How did the author go about his work of presenting such an abstract idea in sculpture ? A nude man is enveloped in a net from which he tries to disentangle himself, aided by a genie which repre- sents his will or his awakening conscience. Queirolo, a Genoese fecit. Near by, Corradini represents Pudi- citia in the most immodest guise. This modesty en- velops her nudity in a veil which hides nothing, not even her forehead, but allows her most secret charms to be seen. A Dead Christ by San Martino is covered with a winding sheet which clings closely to every part of the body. How poverty stricken these anecdotes confess the art they express, what tour de force for sculpture whose veritable expression lies exclusively in the physiognomies of faces as of bodies! We find skill in the things, but that is a quality of the workman rather than of the artist. However, after famine even sugared sweetmeats are w-elcomed as manna. At least here are works, bad as they are, and against all ideals, but works. The artist comes from a long distance back and he looks too far ahead perhaps ; but let him have time to establish his equilibrium. Naples, alas, had no Canova to set her on the right road. Her fate was too severe. Nevertheless she profited as well as she could by the reveille sounded at Sansevero and the few modern tombs scattered through the churches o The Dead Christ, Chapel of Sansevero, Naples T. 1 T.,1 1 r- n A-.^^t^ TVT.ir.loo THE PORCELAIN CABINET 161 among others, that, at Santa Chiara, of Pauline Ranieri, the friend of Leopardi. These show us that Naples would have been able to respond to the call if the infamy of the Bourbon regime had not once again thrown her into abject poverty. It would be pleasant to linger a moment over the history of this chapel and the life of its author, over the legend of the Conca. In the palace, now demol- ished, from which this chapel opened there lived, in 1690, Carlo Gesualdo, Prince de Conca. Being a patron of letters, Gesualdo offered his hospitality to Torquato Tasso, even then suffering from the affliction which led him to prison later, and Gesualdo strove to make songs with which he soothed the unsettled genius of his guest. After Tasso's departure, Gesualdo con- tinued to sing and did not hear the kisses that his wife, Maria d'Avalos was giving to Fabrice Caraffa. One day, however, he saw them and thereupon the lovers fell to the ground, strangled, both of them, and Gesual- do fled. For a long time their agonizing cries re-echoed through the deserted palace at night, and a white phantom was seen at the windows by the people who had courage to look up at them in the darkness of night. This mystery and terror suited the Prince Sangro di Sansevero who settled his furnaces and pipes among them. He was an inventor, a madman, in other words, who passed his days in this umbrageous 162 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES solitude in combining chemical mixtures out of which came surprising things. In 1780 Lalande saw some pictures painted with wax from which the grease had been eliminated and which had then been mixed with water and colours obtained by boiling certain herbs; he saw also some engravings in colour drawn from a single plate at one impression of the press; books printed in characters of different shades at one blow of the bar; stuffs printed without a wrong side; glass and marble coloured, not in the oven, but when cold, yet which had absorbed the colour into their substance; some lapis lazuli chemically obtained; precious stones so debased as to be unrecognizable; porcelain so hard that it was used in a rolling mill ; hemp as fine as silk ; waterproof clothes ; wood that burned without leaving an ash; a perpetual lamp Aladdin's no doubt. Let us use its light to see the awakening of the Nea- politan genius. By its beams shall we see Prince San- gro di Sansevero as the symbol of Naples, trying, like the man in the statue of Queirolo, to deliver herself from the meshes by which she has been bound. There have been many critics to glorify themselves in cursing the art of the eighteenth century, the art that has been called the Jesuit style from the profession of P. Pozzo who inaugurated it. Considering its crimes, nothing is left us but to abominate it. In Rome, at Venice, in France, too, its deeds are odious. At Naples it can THE PORCELAIN CABINET 163 have been nothing but a friend : here it is excused, it is understood, loved, not for itself, but because it pro- claims the effort of resurrection after two centuries of death. If the Disinganno (the man with the net) struggles with disordered gestures, we need not find fault with him, but with the strength and the force that their age has given to the meshes of his net, with the obscure consciousness also, perhaps, of the fatal mistakes they represent. Poor Naples, how she struggles ! At Capodimonte we shall see the most charming testimony of Naples's return to life when she was con- sidered dead. Before going up there, however, we must not be afraid of descending into the quarter of the Fontanelle. Between the hill of Capodimonte and that of Palaeo- polis lie the dirty waters and the calamitous alleys of one of the oldest and most sordid quarters of Naples. It is even held that the first Cumaean Naples was here. Whether it was or not, the Christians were early in installing themselves here, and beneath the hospice of San Gennaro dei Poveri, where Saint Januarius was formerly buried, we see the catacombs dating back to the first century. Further on, at the very bottom of the Fontanelle, are other immense catacombs, caverns for Lestrigons and Lotophages. Millions of bones are laid out here in an orderly arrangement to which, on 1 64 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES Fridays, come the women of the people to ask for winning numbers in the lottery. The benefit to us will be a modest one, and we shall receive it at Capodimonte. Charles III. had this palace built, without foresight, over the caverns which began to give way so that the building was abandoned, and it was not finished until the time of Ferdinand. Let us not be too severe upon the overgrown structure in this landscape full of shadows, which calls for simpler walls. Here for more than fifty years were sheltered the Farnese collections, brought from Parma by Don Carlos, but which were first brought to light by excava- tions for antiques in Rome or collected from many places by the artistic taste for pictures and bibelots of the nephews of Paul III. In this half -built palace lay -in heaps and for years the wonders which now make the Museum of Naples often the happy rival of the Vatican Gallery. But they were not sold and that is a great deal. President de Brosses tells us in what state they were found before 1740: "These barbarous Spaniards, whom I look upon as modern Goths, not content with having torn the pictures away from the palace at Parma, have left them for three years on a dark stairway" which everyone feels free to use for private convenience. That is how Titian's portrait of Paul III. and Dance were treated. It was not until after 1790, under Ferdinand, and later under Murat, THE PORCELAIN CABINET 165 that the present museum was organized and the injur- ies were effaced, perhaps, too, repaired. Everything was neglected at Capodimonte. Charles III. had never thought of it as anything but a meeting- place for his hunting parties. Medrano, disgraced, paid dear for his indiscreet zeal which was not re- deemed by the San Carlo theatre. Sanfelice suggested to the King the idea of installing a porcelain factory within these useless walls, a bit of flattery offered up to the Queen, who was the daughter of the Elector of Saxony. Saxon workmen were imported, Chinese models were bought in Paris, marble was brought from Pisa. In Calabria a white earth was discovered which in every way resembled kaolin, and the royal factory of Capodimonte was created. To this day, in the halls of the palace we see delicate and charming products, tender and milky paste, exquisitely fine designs, and most beautiful forms. We also see the masterpiece, that wonderfully charming work, the porcelain cabinet, which was formerly at Portici, a boudoir entirely panelled with porcelain, garlanded with a thousand flowers, mirrors ornamented with roses like those of Saxony, doors with strong casings like hewn wood, a complete and highly finished work, possessing that which should be asked of an art which makes no pretensions to grandeur: harmony and per- fection of detail. In this porcelain cabinet sleeps the 1 66 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES Neapolitan soul disentangled at length from the meshes in which the Riberas bound it. It needs only to be reawakened once again. Will the economical development of modern Naples give it what the Angevins, the Aragonians, the viceroys, and the Bour- bons could not produce, that is to say, a personal effort in art, such a Neapolitan art as there is a Tuscan and an Umbrian art? The germs are there: the Greek, genius, at first and always perceptible, and Nola, Fansaga, Vanvitelli prove its vitality. Southern Italy is a little like the Cinderella of the unified king- dom. When it becomes more prosperous it will be more fruitful, and the flowers in the porcelain will scatter their pollen upon the branches which are leaf- less, but not dead. SixtK Day TREYS TKe Mvisexim N the lottery of the antiques Rome has drawn the two fives; fours went to London, thanks to fortunate expedi- tions to Greece; and to the Farnese and Vesuvius Naples owes the treys which Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and Munich may envy her. The Farnese collection dates back to the first dis- coveries of the antique. Giulia Farnese, who was the 167 1 68 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES mistress of Alexander VI., made the fortune of her brother Alexander, the Cardinal delta gonella (the petticoat Cardinal; that is, a society man). She turned into the hands of her family the opportunity to profit by the numerous excavations. Paul III., who was cardinal under Alexander VI., under Julius II., and under Clement VII., filled his Roman palace with all that the amiability of the popes allowed him to collect. From the time of Julius II. the Vatican was filled, yet the cardinal's picks did not work in vain. When Cardinal Alexander Farnese became Paul III. he took care not to place all the treasures he had amassed in the Vatican : he was thoughtful enough not to rob his son Paolo Luigi of all the profits of his throne. When Paolo Luigi went to take possession of the Duchy of Parma, which his father gave him the more liberally that it was not his to give, the favoured son took with him to Parma the Roman antiques which Pope Paul III. had been collecting for the past forty years. At Parma they were found by Don Carlos, the heir of his mother, Elizabeth Farnese, and when Carlos became King of Naples, he stripped Parma to decorate his royal palace, taking away not only the antiquities, but many of the pictures, includ- ing masterpieces of the Renaissance. Happily, as we remember, he held the highest scruples against carry- ing them off with him again when he left Naples to TREYS 169 mount his father's throne as Carlos III. of Spain. Only in 1790, however, did his son King Ferdinand make of them the nucleus of the collections of the present Museum, which was further enriched by the excavations of Pompeii, Herculaneum, Stabiae, and of the sites of the Greek colonies scattered along the borders of the Tyrrhenian Sea. How wonderful it is to see these Greek masterpieces come back by roads on which they so easily might have been lost, to remain, at last, on what was originally Greek soil! Rome had stolen them from Athens; Parma had stolen them from Rome ; Elizabeth might . have taken them from Parma to Spain ; but, as she did not, her son Carlos found them in Parma and could bring them with him to Naples. He, too, might have taken them to Spain ; but in Naples they were allowed to remain. Did some mysterious power seem to have held them to the shore of the bay colonized by the Greeks ? We all know that when the Roman emperors left Italy for Byzantium, they took with them back to the Ionian shores most of the marbles and bronzes which the proconsuls and artists had brought from there in earlier years. Those treasures disappeared in the Musselman disturbances and so it fell out that the only record of most of that wonderful Greek art was in the copies made of the works while they were in Rome, together with a few originals that the em- 170 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES perors had left behind and which falling with the buildings they ornamented, protected, indeed, by their ruins, were preserved against the barbarism of the Middle Ages and the saintly popes. At length the artistic popes came and dug them up. Then every man wanted some of those treasures for himself, and, thanks to that greed for the beauty, unheard of by so many generations, when the mysterious course of human events placed a descendant of one of the most ardent ruin-diggers upon the throne of Naples, then the masterpieces and masterly copies which had so long lain abandoned in a little villa in Northern Italy made their last journey to their native latitude, the land which the Greeks embraced in Greece. How joyously they must have felt their shoulders warm to the paternal sun! Among the actions of men there are certain coincidences to which our ignorance may often attribute marvellous causes. The idea of Providence was born out of these extra- ordinary combinations. Surely the return to the land of a Greek colony of these last Greco-Roman spoils should be reckoned among the world's miracles. In this landscape which seems to have been modelled by the hand of a Myron, Naples offers to our eyes the works of Olympia and Corinth. The Museum of Naples is as indispensable as the Vatican to one who wishes to familiarize himself with antique art, TREYS 171 and it surpasses the Vatican in the harmony of its setting. All that we have learned at the Vatican is confirmed here; but at Naples our intellectual acquisitions of which we must profit without too closely scrutinizing the means by which they come to us are enriched by new points of view. The traveller goes to the Museum the day he arrives: an excusable, but not a justifiable haste, for to properly enjoy the Museum it is better to wait until the landscape has made its impression on us. When the lines of the capes, the mountains, the hills, the beaches, and the volcano have made their images of purity, when the sublime con- struction of the Bay of Naples has given us the true measure of beauty, of order, of exact proportions, and of values, when the light, warm air has enriched the blood in our veins with some of the same ardour that ran under the skin of Pericles, when, in a word, the Neapolitan atmosphere has gradually, day after day, awakened the Greek soul within us, only then can we begin to fully understand the meaning of these works. Then the walls of the building where they stand fall as if by enchantment. As the blood of reawakened youth beats in our arteries, with new eyes we see the statues in their ancient porticoes, whose shadows pro- tect us from the burning sun. We envelop them in the light that fills our own pupils, seeing them standing I 7 2 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES with plenty of space about them in gardens and temples, ornamenting houses and city squares. Again and more than ever we feel the exalted wonder which laid hold of us as we stood before the Apoxyomenos in the Braccio Nuovo of the Vatican or before the Muses of Praxiteles. We feel a still greater sense of that up- lifting melancholy, that strange humility with which genius always overpowers us, which prostrated us at the Thermae when we looked at the Ephebos and at the Birth of Venus. Then the antiques of Naples become familiar to us and we move about them as about loved objects in our own homes. We are then moulded by Nature to reach the heights which enable us to find them simple and easy to understand. This sense of being at ease before a masterpiece, which increases to the wonderful point of losing all our self -conscious- ness, does not come until after reflection, but once known must always be cherished as one of the sweetest emotions of the instant. You*are not in ecstasy, but under the charm; you are not agitated, but happy; you live that hour as if you had never lived any other. The disciples of Plato passed before Lais, we pass before Psyche; they met the beautiful Charmide, we bow to Doryphoros. It has become quite natural to us to see so much perfect beauty. We feel the harmony between the things of earth and the things of men. We bathe in the rays of the sublime diffused by these Alinari Psyche National Museum, Naples TREYS 173 works with the same ease that we bask in the rays of the sun. We follow the lines of the perfect bodies with no more astonishment than we follow the lines of the perfect coast. No, it is not mere chance which gives this daughter of Chalcis as the last resting place of Greek thought ! There is still another pleasure, which is at the same time a proof. In going out of the Neapolitan churches after so much wandering about in nothingness, after so much shine and uproar, it is a profound pleasure to come here and listen to these pure and grave voices. After seeing so many agitated Riberas, such an insist- ence of mountebanks, one comes to doubt oneself, to wonder if our weakened senses are not deceiving us, if it is not ourselves, instead of these wind-blowers, who are in the wrong. Such long continued observa- tion of ill-doing ends by allowing it to penetrate us. A fear of "the spirit of the age" begins to haunt us. That way of thinking is dangerous, like many others. There is so much of the relative and the momentary in the tastes of men. But, turn to the Naples Museum; there is a standard which gives the true measure of things every day. There we find all forms and all conditions, all the passions and all the sublimities of true expression which, nothing ever, or hardly ever, surpasses. Even the famous Butt, Dirce and the avengers of Antiope, theatrical as they are, keep 174 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES within limits of which Ribera's tribe had not the least suspicion. You see that in looking at the punish- ment inflicted by Antiope's sons, Amphion and Zethus, upon Dirce, attached to the bull like a Mazeppa. Antiope, pleading for forgiveness in the background, would find even the need of getting out of the way suf- ficient reason to have her legs in the air were she on a ceiling of Santa Chiara. The sculptor of the antique, Hellenist though he was, and of a decadent epoch, kept his figures within high and noble lines. There is still serenity in this work of variety. Even the Hercules, to whom Taine would willingly offer "a glass of the wine of the abattoir," has a serenity that lifts him above the common world. And perhaps we see him too near. At Palermo, in the gardens of La Favorita, a cast of this Hercules placed upon the top of a column, has a proud air, standing out in a striking mass with the muscles softened down, achieving his triumph by the simplicity of outline. But between those two, you must see the bust of Psyche. No one can ever be deceived in his judgment of the beautiful who has looked at that supple torso, that tender breast, the modest purity of that face. If you have but entered the ways of reason and judgment you can only be strengthened in them by knowing also the Harmodius here and the Aristogiton, the Orestes and Electro,, and the bas-relief of Orpheus, still more serene than that at TREYS 175 the Villa Albani in Rome. No doubt the Inferno from which we have lately escaped has much to do with our pleasure here; but should we be so satisfied, even by contrast, if we were not finding the truth? The antique remains the touchstone. It is enough to go from Naples to Psestum to be sure that the Baroque architecture is worthless. It is enough to enter the Naples Museum to be convinced that the school of Ribera can have no value. What is more confounding is to know that Ribera learned his art in Rome and that before coming here he was at Parma; that he had looked upon it all and had seen nothing. He had talent, much of it. He even studied and developed it, but he did not use his eyes. Think of Michelangelo, what antiquity revealed to him nor did he see a quarter of what Ribera saw and what it made him produce in the Sistine. Think of what it revealed to Raphael who knew so cleverly, as always, how to pass through the filter of his genius the visions by which he was obsessed and how to realize them in his easy way on the walls of the Stanze. Then ask yourself how was it possible for the Neapolitan painters to remain such strangers as they were to beauty. Rome was not far away, yet they never cared enough for her treasures to go there; the Vatican sisters of these works here offered themselves to their inspection in vain. They would not have found the austere Juno, whose gravity, 1 76 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES whose severity and peace might have turned them from their course, might have made them blush ; but the Jupiter Otricoli would have been sufficient to have stopped them forever. Even ignoring the antique, the lines of the Neapolitan gulf should have been enough for them. Only obstinately they saw nothing. Their punishment is in our contempt, justified now that we have a bench-mark. What a good bath to take every day! Let us look from the hills to the marbles and make ourselves sure of our own judg- ments. Fearless, then, let us face the deceivers, the dust throwers, sure that they cannot deceive our inno- cence or our scruples, that they never can blind us. One of the greatest benefits that can be derived from antique statuary by the traveller who has already tested it at the Vatican and finds it augmented by a fitting landscape is in the familiarity, the intimacy he feels with genius, or even his homely feeling for men among themselves. The great sadness of every thoughtful being, especially of one given to reflection upon it, is in the solitude he must always feel among his brothers. The great strength of the individualist theory comes from the exigent personality that the most cultivated education does not succeed in destroy- ing. On the contrary, it seems as if the ransom of mental perfection is paid by the bitterness of egotism, in the noblest conception of that word. To reach TREYS 177 the point of being absorbed in another, or in all others, seems to be a mad dream to realize which one must have the heart of Buddha; when one is cut off from the world, however, it is not difficult to think one- self the centre and the soul of it. Only when one fully lives in his surroundings does he cease to think of his own part in them. His small personal life goes by and he leaves to the coming ages the trouble of co- ordinating so many individualities to make out of them what as a Frenchman I might call an essence or a synthesis of the independent molecules in which we scatter ourselves. The wonder of Greek art has been to achieve this reconstruction through beauty, to link together again the chain uniting all men. The Greek statues are the magic mirrors in which we see ourselves in the pure state, without dross. We envy them their qualities because no one of them is so won- derful that we cannot fancy ourselves equally perfect. They are our ideals because they are us. Those who, like Stendhal, reproach the statues of antiquity for* lack of expression in their faces, have not looked at them well. Already, at Rome, 1 we have seen, first, that we should make a mistake to look for expression solely in the small space between the cranium and the neck . Our customs , which lay a thick and stiff covering upon the body, compel us to look on the end of one 1 A Month in Rome, Sixth Day. A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES another's noses for the expression of sentiments that agitate the entire body. The Greeks gave to the face no more than its own part. Possibly, having a wider field of expression both to employ and to observe, they were less keen than we are to discern the tempest of a heart in the line of a cheek. But how many other things could they perceive in a contraction of the sciatic muscle, in the pulsation of the sides, in all the other play of the body! Their hymn to the human body, which seems to us exclusively of the flesh, was but a hymn to the human mind which they read as much upon the breast as upon the lips. Their elo- quence was seven or eight times greater than ours, since it interpreted sentiment expressed upon a surface seven or eight times greater; we see but the head they saw the whole body. Would it not be better, then, to let our joy in this bright, gay Neapolitan life, serve to make us know ourselves? In the midst of this appro- priate setting of nature we find again our whole being, lost so many generations ago, whose habits we have so utterly forgotten we find a voluptuous feeling in the atmosphere at Naples that one must experience at Athens, on the Acropolis, the sensation of perfect harmony, when man loses himself in feeling the plant at his feet, when he trembles at contact with earth, as if he were taking root again, basking in the happiness of recognizing himself as complete at last. IT''-- Alinari Drunken Silenus Sleeping Satyr National Museum, Naples Alinari Alinari Drunken Satyr National Museum, Naples TREYS 179 The pictures of our brothers will aid us at once. Stendhal neglected the busts of the Capitol. Let us not reproach him for indifference to what they had to say ; perhaps we too should have failed to understand them under the same circumstances. It is the Nea- politan atmosphere which gives all those figures their full value in retrospect. If our instinct now draws us nearer to the statues, how much more easily must we be attracted to the Hermes and to the busts. A while ago we were but acquainted, now we have become brothers. At our ease among these untrammelled bodies, ourselves unburdened of the conventional clothing, which seems to drop from our shoulders, the company of Homer and Euripides gives us a more intimate hold on humanity. No gallery in the Naples Museum is more rich in love than that of the portraits. Having already grown magnificent in our limbs and torso, we here grow nobility of feature, here we become whole. This company may be emperors and philo- sophers, they may be Euripides or Zeno, Marcus Aurelius or Socrates, Titus or Antisthenes, they are also our kind. The majesty of Euripides is accom- panied by an indulgent smile of raillery. Homer's suffering is accompanied by pity. Herodotus tells us beautiful stories, the leading characters of which are before us in marble, but so alive! The very ugliness of Socrates is dear to us. Hadrian seems to be a re- i8o A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES production of some fine work of art we have already known. We remember having rubbed elbows with Caligula. Everywhere we meet just humanity which changes so little, is always human. Soon it seems as if these portraits go with us, that we are strolling along side by side from one hall to another. What is lacking in one we borrow for it from another, amusing our- selves with the bodies and the heads waiting about for us to come up to them, much as children play paper dolls, but with this difference that we piece up nothing but the sublime. Socrates inspires us with unlimited confidence in human genius, and although each of us, perhaps, produces but a mediocre share in the world's true work, useless as it is in itself, its utility is great in the total of humanity, for our infirmities, which reduce us to the sensations of the present hour, hinder us, no doubt, from seizing the object of many acts which appear inferior when isolated, but which prove considerable in their place in the great whole. Thus inspired, we no longer see but cold images before us. As the marble body draws us nearer in apprecia- tion of the human form the material, so do the fore- heads and the hollow eyes draw us near to the minds of the departed race. Everything seems easy, natural to us in this company. The strange solitude of a little time ago, when it seemed that one must be alone here not to be lonely, that is to say, at the price of a con- TREYS 181 tradiction, all that is forgotten in the abundance of companionship ; the solitude here finds in us no sensa- tion akin to the idea of loneliness. The bronzes of Herculaneum and of Pompeii es- pecially those of Pompeii can only carry us back to our sad misery, in our fierce individuality. Among them there are excellent works, certain of them perfect, two or three sublime, like the Lyre-playing Apollo of Pompeii, the Mercury, the dZschines, and the Drunken Satyr of Herculaneum. But they are all by far too social in character. The Apollo may carry us away from the life and routine of our own house, but the Dancing Faun and the Narcissus lead us back at once peremptorily without brutality, of course ; they are so charming. We have flown too high to be willing to come down to earth so quickly. Once more we feel that we must keep away from men if we would endure them. The antiquity shops of Barbedienne and Thiebaut, excellent as are their wares, cannot give us the sensa- tions we have at the Louvre, and the emotion that Barbedienne's treasure gives us because it is nineteen hundred years old cannot be taken into the considera- tion. The incontestable and flagrant superiority of strength in the Herculaneum bronzes and the pre- eminence of charm in those of Pompeii always leave us under the impression of the inferior and secondary destination of the Pompeian art. The Apollo Playing 182 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES the Lyre and the Ephebos's Head are the only ones and we are not quite sure of them which are not of an industrial character. Neither from Pompeii nor from Herculaneum have we anything, approximately speak- ing, except the Doryphoros, the Lyre-playing Apollo, and the Dionysos, which was not destined as furnish- ings. The more or less delicate taste of the time of these bronzes, which may have desired to produce masterpieces, was constrained to adapt itself to the needs of men, to exigencies more or less legitimate. If it is right for us to give ourselves up to the prestige of the antique, surely we must not do so without reflection. Our dissatisfaction is justifiable, therefore, in looking at these rehandlings of the artistic thought in the interest of industry, perfect as they are. And if we wish to be just in our criticisms and our appreciations, we should not limit ourselves to seeing them in the Museum. We should make much more of them by studying them in these galleries than we could by seeing them in the houses of Pompeii or Herculaneum where we see them in the midst of a thousand distract- ing conditions ; but we should not consider them separ- ate from their surroundings, because it was for those surroundings only that they existed. Are the statues of the Museum merely copies? There are copies which have been ordered solely for the need of possess- ing a masterpiece, not the desire to decorate a tab- Alinari Paul III with His Grandsons National Museum, Naples Danae and Cupid National Museum Naples TREYS 183 linum. When Atticus, Lucullus, Cicero, and so many others brought the beautiful Greek bronzes to Rome, they did not think of which corners of their porticoes or what fountains the object would "just fit." They only thought of being able to admire tomorrow the thing they found so beautiful today. The Romans who employed artists to copy those works acted under the same enthusiasm. First of all to have possession of the work, and then to arrange to place it. The de- formations of the Pompeian bronzes responded to quite another purpose; the same which prevents us from separating them from the tablinum and the peri- stylium inspired by Lheir artisans. Just as Colas's re- duction of Michelangelo's Pensieroso although a good reproduction cannot be judged as one would judge the statue in the Medici Chapel, so can we not be equitable toward these works exiled in a Museum. At Herculaneum and at Pompeii only, going from the cities to the Museum and from the Museum to the cities, can we establish the value of things, of paintings and bibelots, even more than marbles. Then Har- mony, which is the only certain aesthetic law, will be found presiding over our judgments. At Capodimonte we learned, thanks to our dear President De Drosses, to what treatment these pictures were subjected after Charles III. had taken the trouble to bring them with him from Parma. Twenty-five 184 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES years after De Brosses's time they were in the same state, aggravated only by the passing of time. "This palace (Capodimonte)," wrote the Two Swedish Gentlemen, "was intended to receive the furniture from Parma, and in waiting until it could be fittingly provided for, the boxes of books and the pictures were heaped together in the first rooms of the ground floor which happened to be finished. . . . The pic- tures were but lately unboxed when we saw them. They had suffered all that they could surfer in their long wait with no hope of a happier future. In fact, hung any way whatever on the walls of uninhabited apartments, exposed to dampness and to the injuries of the air to which the palace a mere ruin is open, nothing can save them from the destruction toward which so many causes have been combining for twenty years." Our visit to the picture galleries of the Museum shows that things, even less than men, should never despair of "a happier future." But is there any hap- pier future than that to which these paintings have come? We no longer see traces of injuries from the air, and if that is a picture's happiness, these pictures enjoy the height of felicity. Fortunately for us, all that men undertake to do with them, against them, but half succeeds. Leonardo's Supper, at Milan, had already been repainted when Rubens saw it, and it TREYS 185 has been done over a good dozen of times since. Nevertheless it still exists. The pictures at Naples have been repainted but once ; not much, but too much. Yet they have one virtue; they teach us somewhat of the souls of their owners, of those sons and nephews, artists themselves, of the artist Pope. The Farnese knew how to choose. We find here works of the first order, although not always the most beautiful, of the greatest painters of the Renaissance. Tuscany, Umbria, Venice, Lombardy, Romagna, and foreign countries are here represented by the works of their sons works that are worthy of Florence, of Venice, of Cologne, of Amsterdam. The latter were brought to the collection, no doubt, by the daughter of Charles V. on her marriage with a Farnese. That they were admitted proves how wide was the culture of the col- lectors. First rank among the rest must be given to the Lorenzo di Credi, for a surprising richness of colour and depth of feeling, a Sodoma that Siena may well envy, a Botticelli of notable composition, a Canaletto no less convincing than the others and charmingly delicate, some portraits of the Parmesan, of course, the portraits which have made too many of us forget the painter of the Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine, at Parma, 1 rival even of Correggio's great work, an easel piece of Moretto, which is not a portrait, the 1 Little Cities of Italy, vol. ii. 1 86 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES same Moretto whose work we love so at Brescia for its distinction and its silver reflections. J The Farnese had some of all that was worth having; they made up their gallery with infinite art. In it, as in all others, he who puts all others out of sight, attracts all hearts, is the great, incomparable, unequalled Titian. If Titian had never painted anything but the Danae and the Portrait of Paul III. and his Nephews; if we had not the Francis I. at Paris, and the Charles V. at Munich, the Assumption at Venice, the Venus of Urbino at Florence, and so many others, still these two pictures at Naples would be enough for Titian's glory. In profane works he is as brilliant as Veronese, but adds to them a feeling of love of which Paolo Caliari did not know enough. Veronese was a prodigious vir- tuoso. Titian is, too, and, besides, he caresses his subject in presenting it, caresses it and touches its depths as well. His work has the serious love of life of which Veronese presented only the brilliancy. Titian possessed all the gifts shared among his rivals, besides his own particular gift, which was to feel intensely the things he painted, to burn for these women's bodies, for this Danae by whom one feels thrilled like the god himself who seduced her in the full bloom of her rich beauty. And to this flame he adds the terrifying vision of the soul. It is custom- 1 Little Cities of Italy, vol. i. TREYS 187 ary, when one comes back from Madrid, to deny that they who have not seen Velasquez can know what a soul can express with the brush. Titian's Paul III. and his Nephews permits those who have not seen Madrid to be reassured in their imputed ignorance. This portrait is the sublime itself, humanity reached at the most profound depths, at bedrock. Before it the pen recognizes its weakness, that its expression, at best, can never say as much about the hearts of men as Titian's brush was able to say in this picture. What could we do if we wished to portray in twenty pages, or in a hundred, a Paul III. ? Titian places him under our eyes breathing, living, terrifyingly stripped bare. It is under Titian's implacable eye we see this sly, covetous old man, the intrepid old man who served his ambition with the vilest of paternal baseness, unless his paternity redeemed all his vices! Titian had him before his own eyes and gave him to us to devour. That sharp nose, that ferretlike muzzle scenting about everywhere to take what no one divined could be touched, that fine forehead notwithstanding, which might have carried such high thoughts if it had not been for the passions housed there, those wicked little eyes so clever to surprise weaknesses, and those hands, those hooklike hands seeming to tremble with their booty. He is there as if ready to spring but no! See those two young men near him, one in Capuchin's 1 88 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES cloak, the other in doublet, the latter coming forward with a bow. The old man is no longer on the spring; he sinks back. Octavio Farnese is respectful, but apparently on his knees though he seems to be, the pale youth is triumphant. The old man gives way under the will of those proud young fellows. Made in the ballroom as this Pope was, he falls back helpless before his own sons who brave him so valiantly. His hands may clutch his chair; the action is but a sign of the soul that would like to spring up, but submits to its vanquishers. Paul III. bows under the weight of his nepotism and his paternity. It is not age that bends his shoulders, but that young man ready to spring upon him. This is one of the most tragic paint- ings that ever has been or can be made ; it gives us a shiver, inspires us with terror with pity too, for never was a beaten old man so touching. We feel that he might have been another Julius II. if he had had no children. With them he was another Borgia, less stupid and more held in check by his times; but he also was victim of the noblest of human sentiments if his office had not compelled him to suppress them. His crime was that he continued to be a father; and it is in that tender light, suffused with forgiveness for the transgression, that Titian paints him. This, be- sides so much else inexpressible to the rest of us is told by Titian as he alone knew how to tell things. TREYS 189 They who wish to learn the eloquence to which the brush can attain should come here to see how a man unveiled, skinned alive, still clings to that which has undone him, and how his children pay him the honours of their palace. What a strong light is that upon the blindness of men with one another ! After seeing this, we may, if we feel in conscience bound, walk through the halls where the Riberas are spread out. Never was the expression of the Parisian ateliers, the words grand machine more applicable than to them. They are indeed the work of great industrial machines, and it is worth while to see them here to confirm the impression of them which we have received in the churches. The obsession of Titian follows us from room to room and we ask our- selves: "Why such a fuss and spread when one little canvas can say so much, take us into the very depths of hell ! " When our tour of the halls is ended, memory retains, besides Titian's masterpiece, little else than the splendid Florentine tapestries, wonderful as they are in delicacy, in composition, in brilliancy; in their way rivals of the beautiful canvases, because, like them, they have been the work of expert fingers guided by honest minds. That is the surviving secret; to know your trade, to exercise it scrupulously, and to have, if you can, a grain of genius thrown in. SeventH Day PAL^EOPOLIS Pompeii HE most difficult thing to do at Pompeii is to be just. If one arrives there innocent with no other acquaintance than the guidebook, even if that be well read, one risks being wonderfully simple. If one stocks himself with information on the real value and the relative value of the ruins, one risks appearing ungrateful or, still more, of deceiving oneself. 190 PALMOPOLIS 191 There is no doubt that the discovery of Pompeii a hundred and fifty years ago enriched the science of antiquity, and it is no less certain, on the other hand, that its treasures are not to be reckoned among the rarest examples of the arts of the past. The excava- tions of Pompeii, begun after those of Herculaneum, have been pursued with greater archaeological zeal more because of the facility they offered to research than for the superiority of the finds. A city of twenty thou- sand souls still weighs upon Herculaneum, whereas nothing but the crops of the fields covered Pompeii. With all the facilities of perforation yielded by me- chanical progress, the problem of Herculaneum is not yet solved. That of Pompeii was solved on the face of it; there was nothing to do but sweep away the dust and ashes, comparatively easy excavation, causing no harm to any one or anything. The ruins, secondary in themselves, have taken first place among ruined cities from the mere fact that they were accessible. To this fact we owe our knowledge of how the ancient Romans lived; we may go about their houses almost as their masters did; we may accompany them in the forum, and stand beside them in their temples. If, then, we enter Pompeii as the Neapolitans entered it in the time of Ferdinand, of Murat, and of Fiorelli (that is to say, without knowing what has since been learned, thanks to them) we have a right to be astonished. I 9 2 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES Let us never forget this gratitude due to things and to men. But can we suppress posterior acquisitions? Can we ignore our knowledge that Pompeii in the year 79, when it was covered by the eruption, was a new city, rebuilt after it had been destroyed by an earthquake in 63? The first emotion passed, is it possible to look at its works of art except without feeling; can we, without exaggeration, rank them among the great works we know ? Perhaps we have been somewhat imposed upon by that earthquake of 63. Pompeii must have bloomed again fifteen years later. The city was shaken down, lying scattered on the ground, but not enough so to give a free field to the reconstructors; and even if the place were to be all rebuilt, the very haste of the enter- prise was an obstacle to fundamental changes. These were new walls, perhaps, walls of the year 79, but ex- actly like those and very often not new, but really those of 63. To us of the twentieth century, and for the object of our search, there is no difference. It was the inhabitants of 63 who rebuilt from 64 to 79: their only thought was to put roofs over their heads again, to continue their existence, to live in 65 as they had been living in 61, to make use of what there was usable in the ruins and at the least expense. The dressing of the stone may be less ancient, in signific- Alinari Street of Fortune, Pompeii Alina.'i House of the Faun, Pompeii Alinari Pompeii and Vesuvius Alinari The Great Theatre, Pompeii PAL&OPOLIS 193 ance it is the same, and that is what we are looking for. Therefore we can never assume an air of distrust toward architectural Pompeii. Much of the ancient city of 62 has been preserved and the new parts, those of the year 65, were similar to those before the terremoto. But the earthquake not only shook down the walls; it knocked over and broke to bits the paintings and sculptures ; and these were replaced in such a way that the terremoto, which means comparatively nothing to us from an architectural point of view, was extremely im- portant from the pictorial and sculptural point of view. We may find the ruins of Pompeii instructive upon the frame, but not upon the picture. What we are con- strained to ask at the outset, before entering upon our examination, is: If the rarity of the works revealed did not have much to do with the admiration of the first searchers, and why do we not continue to express the same degree of admiration notwithstanding the artist- ic treasures a thousand times more precious which have been found in so many places since the seven- teenth century? The Doryphoros, in marble, and the Apollo Playing the Lyre, in bronze, the latter probably an original Greek, are the only great sculptures from Pompeii. All the rest, marble and bronze, is the product of industry, artisan's copies, reductions, arrangements. We may find the object charming and wish to own it; 194 A FORTNIGH T IN NAPLES we cannot venerate it ; and does it haunt our memor- ies? That is the fact; but, here again, let us be careful not to be unjust. When the panic was passed, the eruption finished, the inhabitants of Pompeii, nine- tenths of whom had escaped, went back to dig among the ruins and take away all that they could, naturally the greatest treasures. The mere accident of being especially deeply buried, or some inexplicable indiffer- ence, perhaps, preserved a few precious works; but, with those exceptions, all the masterpieces of Pompeii were saved immediately after the disaster. Among the secondary objects that were allowed to remain we now have the Narcissus, the Dancing Faun, the Silenus at the Naples Museum. Is it not a wonder that the Narcissus was left ? If the Pompeians furnished their houses like that, their city must have been among the first in the Empire in matters of taste and culture. Toor- nament one's garden with the Child with the Goose, which we see in the House of the Vettii, bespeaks an advanced degree of civilization. One must have a refined soul to trace out the Atlases and round off the stuccoes of the thermae of the Forum . Everywhere Pompeii shines with the excellence of objects of secondary rank in their own day, superior to much of our best modern work. Do you remember I have quoted it before, it so sticks in the memory that saying of the great poet: PAL&OPOLIS 195 "Many disasters have afflicted humanity, but none has given so much pleasure to posterity as the destruc- tion of Pompeii." That was a fierce trait in Goethe; his egotism was of a kind to belittle the truth. We, posterity, should we blush at our pleasure, when con- temporaries rushed upon the pasture? Tacitus lost no time in weeping over his friend Pliny. Making no secret of his wish to write his memoirs, he begged Pliny the Younger to send him all the details possi- ble of his uncle's death. Pliny the Younger dried his tears and wrote. So we may dry ours for the sake of reading a masterpiece, model of all obituaries, less hastily composed than ours, to be sure, since it was done long after the event belonging, let us say, under the head of "Things Seen." I thought of that letter as I read the descriptions of the catastrophe at Messina. You remember the at- titude of Pliny the Younger who knew that his uncle was starting for Stabiae, the very heart of the appalling suffering? Not only did he refuse to accompany him, but slept on peacefully and when he awoke, resumed his reading of Livy. Beside this cold-heartedness stands the admirable heroism of the young Pliny's mother, "Flee, my son," she cried, "I am old; I shall await death here in my own house, happy that I have saved you !" But what can we say of the Elder Pliny, magnificent and pitiable at the same time? He was 196 A FORTNIGHT IX XAPLES commander, we know, of the Roman fleet, and his duty called him to Retina, the port of Herculaneum whose name has been resumed by the Resina of today. Yet it was as much the curiosity and interest of a savant as the duty of an officer that impelled him to sail from Misenum to Stabise across the changed and troubled bay. Soon after he landed he stopped at the house of a friend and slept, after having dined well. His death from cardiac emphysema saved his memory at least. At Messina we saw acts of sublime devotion and odious weakness. The scenes of horror there were but repetitions of those of Pompeii as we know of them from the bodies and the positions in which they were found. When the rubbish is cleared from Messina we shall have another Pompeii. To be sure, the two catas- trophes are not similar, and Messina will not entertain so remote a posterity as that of Pompeii; but the feelings they arouse in us are the same. Time makes no difference in the souls of men. Buried or fallen down, both are destroyed cities. The same passions were aroused by the two catastrophes, the same pain- ful regret and the same curiosity seized the world. One lights the other. A visit to Pompeii enables us to understand many things about Messina, as the memory of the recent destruction of that city is an enlightenment, though not that of actual erudition, for a visit to Pompeii. Alinari Peristyle in the House of the Vettii, Pompeii Alinari The Temple of Isis, Pompeii The Child with the Goose, House of the Vettii, Pompeii PAL&OPOLIS 197 As a guide of any sort I make no pretensions. If you want information, there are the works of Gaston Boissier, of M. Henry Thedenat, and of M. Pierre Gusman. I should be awkward and unsatisfactory if I set up for a savant, although sincerity is at the bottom of my heart. . . . But let us merely think dream of Pliny, of history, of Messina, of the objects that have been found here, of the streets, of the works of art ... let us dream of ourselves. Visitors think much more of being moved than of being in- structed, and, still more, they like to be astonished. This city is full of things to wonder at. The first sur- prise that strikes us is its toylike aspect. As soon as we enter it, we follow a narrow street in which a car- riage could barely pass. A street of the outskirts, no doubt, we think; but as we go on, we find the other streets scarcely wider, even the Via Marina which begins at the city gate and upon which the hotels are situated. The Strada di Nola, by which we enter the heart of the uncovered city, although somewhat less narrow, hardly gives a different impression. Whether the streets are wide or narrow, the houses are all of the same level. The surface occupied by Pompeii is that of a city, the height is that of a chicken yard. One is constantly looking over the walls. Everything is low and flat as if in shelter from the wind. Never did the symbol of the scythe in the hands of Death seem i 9 8 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES truer than here. Vesuvius, always present, never lost from sight for an instant, seems armed with the curved steel which compelled the little earth-covered walls to lie low. Really we seem to be walking about in a toy city, that of some crown prince, perhaps, but nevertheless a toy. Is it not true? Is it not one of those constructions fashionable just now? I am re- minded of M. Bigot's remarkable reconstruction of ancient Rome on a table ten metres square that I have seen at Rome. We feel like saying that the arch- aeological scholars have chosen the real site for their reconstructions and would make us believe that they are the real city, so much the more that the houses are little, too, or what we see of them in passing, if we do not stop to go into them or look through the gratings that shut them away from us. The shops, in ancient times, cannot have had much business. When the proprietor, his merchandise, and a customer were in them, they were full. If we want an idea of Pompeii living as well as one of the dead and dug-out city, let us walk one morning about that quarter of Naples lying between the Via Toledo and the Port, through the Strada de' Tribunali and San Biagio among others. A visit to Pompeii is necessary to complete our understanding of Naples and vice versa; necessary to reconstruct the shops which remain intact in their state of ruin. And that PAL&OPOLIS. 199 state of ruin is Pompeii which they resuscitate entirely. When you have become familiar with the old quarters of Naples, with the streets of the ancient Palasopolis and Neapolis; when you have fallen into the habit of going about between the high houses as you would go along a path between rows of oaks in a forest ; when you have gazed scores of times into the depths of the filthy bassi; when you can name all the shopkeepers seated before their shops which are but their storerooms, since the transaction of their business, and even the manufacture of their wares, are carried on upon the sidewalks; in fact, when you are somewhat initiated into the life of the Neapolitan people, it is impossible not to call up at once such life within the low walls of Pompeii. On the other hand, after a half hour's walk in the streets of Pompeii, Naples seems to arise before your eyes and the buried city to live in the Naples of today. Were the houses of Pompeii as high as those of Naples? No more than those of Fontainebleau or Compigne could they rival the tall houses of Paris. But the shopkeepers had the same customs. In the narrow streets, about the same width in both cities, opens the same little shop with its front wall at a com- fortable height to lean on and where the merchant can put his goods under the nose of the passer-by. When there are tools to his trade, it is upon this low wall they are placed exactly as you see the wares of the Neapoli- 200 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES tan second-hand woman, her caldron in the gutter, and leathers of the shoemaker lying about him on the pavement. The out-of-door life has created, in the two cities, the same massing of things and people. They all hasten to get out of their houses to be in the air, the light, the warmth of the sunshine. We see those Pompeians so well, occupying the whole of the way, the women grinding their mixtures, the men standing about, leaning against the wall, talking, the children running between the legs of the passers-by. The street, filled night and morning with a loitering, light-hearted people, is closed to carriages, if not theo- retically, at least practically, the street belonging to the inhabitants, not to those who would pass through it. Here, too, are the overflowing shops, full of vegetables, shining in the shadows, of stuffs as black as the pigeonholes in which they lie, of sandals with hanging and tangled thongs, the barber, repul- sively fat and smelling of dry soap. The image-seller's stock of idols of the first century has been replaced by saints in highly coloured pictures and statuettes in wax and plaster. The fuller today the dyer had his tunics and togas hanging out on the line ; and who knows if the laundress with her ironing women at work upon the sidewalk, did not then, as now, bar it as with a toll- gate? Was it not all lived in Pompeii, this Neapolitan life, so interesting despite its repugnance, so attractive PAL&OPOLIS 201 while it turns your stomach, this life of nude nature and of confidence in the generosity of God ? Man changes little with all the apparent growth of civilization. He lays that which he acquires upon that which he already possesses. His habits, his cus- toms remain, almost always due to the climate, which changes but little. Who of us, in going about our own French country, has not stopped before a remote farm, an isolated cabin, before a vision in the flesh of a peas- ant of five or six hundred years ago to whom modern invention has given some facilities without essentially drawing him out of his ancient habits ? It is this per- petuity of human nature that strikes when we see the ruins of Pompeii after loitering about the streets of Naples. They might have been one. Knowing that Naples was the last place on the Tyrrhenian Sea to remain Greek, and that Pompeii also was Greek, with the combined modesty and assurance of dreams, we make up our picture from what we know of Greek life or, at least, of Greek life in Italy. The day when Seli- nunte again sees the light we shall be quite certain. We shall be much surprised if a second Pompeii does not come forth, a prodigious metope, between the columns of Selinunte. Little city as it was, Pompeii did not differ much in her customs from the great cities. Nor did she differ 202 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES much from them in the majesty of her buildings. On the score of general appearance, diminished on one hand by the levellings and augmented on the other by the absence of people, it yet remains undeniable that in its streets, its temples, and its houses the spaces of Pompeii are disproportioned. Let us go nearer and try to understand this blemish. Perhaps we shall find some general idea, some leading thread which will give us the clue to the Pompeian soul. The Forum is one of the most impressive to be seen. It is occupied by not less than nine monuments, among which, in the centre, stands the Temple of Jupiter at the top of its steps, a building of imposing majesty, its broken col- umns, so wonderfully slight and smooth, standing out against the magnificent background of Vesuvius. Fine, oblong, clear cut, and not overcharged, it is the Forum of an advanced civilization at which Rome must have looked with surprise. It was laid out with a sense of harmony and, especially, of space, very rare in its epoch. Who has not been surprised at the con- fusion of buildings that must have reigned in the Forum of Rome ? The Forum of Pompeii, on the con- trary, was arranged with care worthy of our own day, when the equal distribution of masses is about the only principle of good taste left in our architects. Remembering that Pompeii had been rebuilt recently, that it was in part new at the time of the catastrophe Alinari The Forum, Pompeii Alinari The Forum, Pompeii PAL&OPOLIS 203 of the year 79, must we not recognize that a great change was taking place in the artistic ideas of the Romans at the beginning of the Empire ? To judge of them, do we not make a mistake to confine ourselves too closely to Rome itself, encumbered as it was by traditions? In the history of antique architecture there is an exception at Pompeii that to my surprise I have not found writers make note of except in the manner in which the repetition of the buildings was understood, and in the particular conception that I have not yet seen in any Roman work, neither in the Forum, nor on the Palatine, nor at Tivoli, and also in the conception of decorative space. But have I read all that is revealed in the history of antique architecture? The fact is that Pompeii was nourished by Naples more than by Rome, and the towns like Amalfi and Passtum were her own sisters. Look at that triangular Forum and say that it is not a pure Athenian smile. A bicorn or rather a tricorn public place at the foot of the ramparts was a place to decorate. From the angle opposite the walls begins a colonnade upon which is enthroned the statue of Marcellus. This colonnade extends the whole length of the two sides of the triangle, and to hide the third side, that of the ram- parts, was raised a temple parallel with them. I climbed upon the base of this temple, so strangely placed that one of the angles is exactly in the axis of 204 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES one of the points of the triangle. There I fell to thinking first of the ingenuity of the equilibrium of the arrangement which the Greek genius always knew how to develop, afterwards of all the Pompeian land- scape. This triangular Forum is less noble than the other; it is more beautiful, perhaps; less pure, more worked, caressed, one might say, with the discernment of a people of harmonious taste, educated to the beauty of line by the mountain peaks that form their horizon. From this platform of the Doric temple, I see the entire chain of Salerno, Stabiae, which hides Castel- lammare, Sorrento, Capri; then, on the other side, is Vesuvius, the great spectator of country that he holds for ever under his menace, the great Vesuvius with the feather in his cap, which can be so placid under his vast mantle the colour of Spanish tobacco as it appears in the noonday sun; and, then, there is the sea, blinding as a mirror, slyly placed so as to flash into our eyes, the entire bay lying before us. At the foot of all these splendours, Pompeii displays her rags upon her ruined body. When Vesuvius destroyed her, he had the decency to cover his work; she made him ashamed, stretching out in the light of day under his eyes all the blemishes he had made in her beauty, in that beauty of form, of composition, and, before all others, that of this triangular Forum wherein I find the august graces of Paestum. PAL&OPOLIS 205 No people ever understood as did the Greeks the necessity of harmony between their buildings and their landscapes. Indeed, the word harmony is not strong enough; the landscape was included in their works temple, theatre, or public square, was so placed as to combine the pleasure to be derived from nature with the pleasure afforded by art. All was mingled and the one made to sustain the other; the mountains and the porticoes but one beautiful effect when placed together. In Sicily the temples make this combination better than here. Here, even in this matter, I see the " factory" taste. If you look at the Great Forum of Pompeii, comparing it to the triangular Forum, you will see that, in spite of the fact that the Romans who built it had Vesuvius for their picture, they took it less into consideration than themselves; they wanted to show off their own greatness, thinking more of their own pride and things that would mani- fest their prestige than of general harmony in the work they were producing. There are two sorts of public spirit which Pompeii alone, perhaps, makes it possible for us to define, at any rate, to feel the influence of. The triangular Forum in front of the mountains of Castellammare is more divine than the other, solemn as that may be, because it is a work of art achieved in the setting of nature. What seems to me still more striking, when we leave 206 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES the works of the public square for those of more in- timate character, is that the Romans reduced the purely intellectual Greek art to serve their own social genius, making the Roman art rather exclusively monumental. In familiar usage, too, the Greeks had an eye for harmony for its own sake that the Romans possessed in less degree. Near the Forum you see the Temple of Apollo. The Romans, you see, did not hesitate to repeat in this the Temple of Jupiter which stood near. You note the same area surrounded by porticoes, the same sub-basement raised to the height of the steps, the same columns equally distributed. The Romans adopted a certain style of temple that they made use of everywhere for the convenience of their cult, without troubling themselves as to its suita- bility, from an artistic standpoint, to the things and the landscape among which it was placed. No doubt Greek temples were repeated, too; but they were re- peated on account of their situation, because of the landscape, not merely because it was a temple. When the question was solely the style of the temple, we see personality freely expressed. If the situation did not require the rectangular development, of which the Parthenon is the masterpiece, the Greek genius eman- cipated itself at once; and it achieved that wonder, so often praised, the Temple of Isis at Pompeii. Standing on a little street, leaning against a theatre PAL^OPOLIS 207 that crushes it, the Temple of Isis, which came from Greece by way of Egypt, where it picked up its cult in passing, can have resembled no other, and we possess in it today one of the most original buildings of an- tiquity. The court is surrounded by a portico on three sides, the fourth side being entirely occupied by the altar. That, standing on a platform reached by several steps, is a complete monument. The back wall is flanked by two aisles in which there are niches for statues. An entire little world, created by the rites of the cult, clusters around this enclosure ; the dwellings of the priests, the ablution chambers, the vaults necessary to a mysterious cult in which the initia- tion played so important a part. In the midst of all these things how far we are from such temples as that of Apollo! The charm of the Isis, the artistic details aside, lies almost entirely in its restrained grace and we must come back to that in its harmony. You may be quite sure that the reason why it has en- chanted so many men gifted with an exquisite sense of beauty is because it was built with the sole pur- pose of making it appropriate to its use a use providing a purpose such as it will require many cen- turies to find again in the mind of a builder. Its square was furnished with a prodigious understanding of all necessities. Everything is arranged with judg- ment and modesty. Oh, those whose faith shook off 208 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES their sleep every morning to celebrate the resurrection of the day may have wished, no doubt, to raise their clamour upon the ramparts, face to the East, looking towards the sea which brought the vesssel of Isis! But this cult, a stranger on Roman soil, must have been obliged to moderate its transports. In the space that a prosperous Pompeian merchant would have found insufficient for his house, the Greek genius developed itself intimately in luxurious refinement and in harmony. This ideal harmony that the Greek was always seeking he concentrated here, and since neces- sity held him within narrow limits, he kept everything closely together perforce. All is small, like a chapel rather than a temple; the columns are those of a peri- style, not of a public building, the altar of a lararium, not of a forum; the niches are more for small fountains than for statues. Yet, if this is true of the size, no- thing fails to bloom in majesty, to develop in grace. The Greek genius knew how to command itself under all circumstances. Wherever it is led it keeps its equilibrium, is comprehensive and appropriate. Let us look, in comparison, at the most considerable monument and incontestably the most beautifu 1 among the Roman remains at Pompeii, the thermae of the Forum. The attention given to majestic ap- pearance more than to the necessary requirements is noticeable at once, as in the Temple to Apollo. You PAL&OPOLIS 209 see how it was arranged so that the citizen, wherever he went, must have been impressed with the grandeur of the people among whom he was numbered. Rome was strong, powerful, even weighed heavily at times upon those who had the honour to belong to her; everything must express her in strength, puissance, in massive form. The lepidarium is certainly one of the most magnificent works of Roman art, yet how pon- derous ! The vaulting is of that perfectly round, low form which is always a little crushing, and the stucco designs in high relief make it fall still lower. It rests upon a cornice with prominent profile, sustained by the most admirable Atlases. The Atlases are in- numerable, one close against another as if they had to support twenty worlds. Certainly the vaulting is heavy, but it does not require this prodigious concen- tration of strength to hold it up! This heaviness is carried into even the small objects in the bronze brazier, for instance, the bronze benches, the cows' heads. One is crushed, stifled, the fire is put out. It seems as if the Romans used to say, "Let us be rich," in the excessive and what we consider ultra-modern sense of the word. And they were so, even to little things which they could make excessive in profusion, if not in dimension. Let us look at the frigidarium, cased with marbles, the walls ornamented with ver- dure, the vaulting sown with stars, the frieze showing 14 210 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES a race course of cupids upon chariots, on horseback, trotting with their own agile feet. Later, no doubt, at the time of the construction of the thermae of Sta- bias and those called the Central Baths, the Romans became a little more refined. But that they showed especially by piercing more numerous windows along their buildings; the decoration remained about the same. The wall of the palestra of the thermas of Stabias seems but the accumulation of the most over- charged frescoes. The vestibule of the apodyterium of the same baths has a vaulted ceiling of stucco and a doorway draped with stucco such as the Italian Ba- roque of the seventeenth century would never have dared to dream of. The Roman genius has always gone straight to the enormous, the colossal, with slow steps, laden with spoils, like Rome herself, sure of her inexhaustible fertility. But was that puffed-up Roman the only Roman? Or was there not another beside him who was without vanity, refined in nature, an artist who preferred the Temple of Isis to that of Apollo, the triangular to the Great Forum ? If so, we shall find the proof in his own house. I have been in nearly all the houses of Pom- peii, that is to say all those that have been named as a sign that they are worthy of attention. There are some forty of them with charming names, usually given for some object found in them, such as the House PAL&OPOLIS of the Faun, the House of the Bull, the House of the Tragic Poet, the House of Ruf us, because a bust of that personage was enthroned there. Was it, perhaps, the house of his mistress ? It is nothing to any one now. The House of the Vettii has been so named from the seals of two members of that family found here. Archaeological science goes too far when it tries to per- suade us that the Vettii were inhabitants of this house and respectable middle-class people. Either the Vettii were on a visit to this house when the cata- strophe occurred or they were quite other than re- spectable middle-class people. So dissolute were the customs of Pompeii, the sign which welcomes all on the very doorstep, and which one cannot help seeing, leaves no room for uncertainty: this house was the dwelling of a courtesan. There is in this picture evi- dence worth its weight in gold, a symbol only too patent. I can well believe that the middle-class people owned licentious pictures even more coarse than this; but that this was the ornament of no middle-class home is evident from its position opposite the door, against the casing of the atrium, in a place where it made the fact plain to all who entered that it was impossible to come into that house without paying. What one sees in this house is what may be said to apply to all the others, the only differences being per- sonal, which do not change the fundamental facts, A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES as there is no essential difference between an apart- ment on the Boulevard Malesherbes in Paris and that of a milliner on the rue de Passy. The first notable characteristic is the great intimacy in which the Pom- peians lived in their own houses, indifferent to the out- side world. When the Roman was within his own door he cut off all contact without. Not a window opened on the street. One of the surprises of Pompeii is to follow along these prison walls from street to street. There was not even an outlet towards the country. Those houses which have any such openings today are all near the ramparts which formerly must have cut off the horizon. The Roman's personal life was concentrated between the atrium and the peri- stylium, everything centring in those two courts and in the tablinum between them. There were no distractions but such as could be found here. It may be because of such seclusion that the people developed the dissolute habits evident to any one who looks at their paintings, either those which have been preserved here on the spot or those in the Museum at Naples. The climate, so favourable to lounging about in com- pany, the temptation of water always ready to plunge into, must have had a tendency to increase the idleness. And except to sleep or for some momentary necessity, who would have thought of retiring from these airy, f ountained courts to the narrow, windowless bedrooms? PALJEDPOLIS 213 Such were the Pompeians' dwellings, and how they taxed their ingenuity to embellish them ! In the small space of the garden of the peristyle they accumulated all that the imagination could furnish to make the long hours amusing. They gathered about them, also, all that they could not see outside and that they loved so much. Besides the lascivious and simply artistic paintings, they had a great number of things that reminded them of the country, the landscape hidden from their sight. A list has been made of the trees and plants represented upon the walls of Pom- peii: the acacia, the cypress, the pine, the oleander, the plane, the oak, the almond, the chestnut, the fig, the walnut, the peach, the olive, the apple, the pear, the grapevine, the acanthus, the aloe, the ivy, the tamarind, the myrtle, reeds, papyrus, the field daisy, the hollyhock, the rose campion, the lily, the Damas- cus rose, the iris, the gladiola, the narcissus, the wild and cultivated poppies: everything from nature that could make the houses more sweet and gay. Every- thing that could be desired was there under the eye and hand. The Pompeians must have been able to live for entire weeks without going out of their doors, enjoying all the comforts of life, with sun, water, flow- ers, arts, and friends. The love of being at home must have been developed to the extreme. Outside ac- tivity may have been easily satisfied by a little shout- 214 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES ing in the Forum or by the public spectacles; the chief attraction was the fresh and quiet home. We have not many Roman houses in Rome. Those of Livy and that of John and Paul are far enough away from these. Certainly there is something that separates Rome from Pompeii, and that something, I believe, is Greek culture, assuredly very great in Rome, but much more pronounced here by reason of natural inclina- tions. In building themselves Roman houses, the Pom- peians immediately raised them to the level of the triangular Forum and the Temple of Isis. In their Great Forum and their baths, their taste for public ostentation was satisfied. They were proud to be a part of the grand and powerful Republic, and their public acts were still grandiloquent. But at home they again felt the influence of their refined training under the porticoes covered with frescoes, among stuccoed and painted columns, hung with garlands, in the midst of flowering borders, fountains, and statues. In their own houses, the Pompeians at once became sensitive and refined. They quickly picked up the Greek education that Rome had imported and they carried it very far. In these Pompeian houses there is a wonderful sense of colour, harmony, and propor- tion. What beautiful reds and yellows for those brown bodies ! All the statues are small reductions of PAL&OPOLIS 215 the ancient Greek masterpieces, little and exquisite. Everywhere is the supreme flower of the artist's heart, which the Greeks knew how to gather with so much good sense; beauty's need to avoid being lonely. Indeed, the scarcity of these intimate objects beside the abundance of the public statuary is noticeable. In the houses there was no ostentation, no facades, no- thing to be seen from without. But there was socia- bility and a profound sense of the essentially beautiful. Beauty requires diffusion and collective effect; it should act en masse to be fully effective. And its great law is to take divers forms. An action may be right, but neither an act nor a verse, and still less a body, can be beautiful except with other equally excel- lent representations. Good wine should be tasted in cut glass; a beautiful woman should lie on silk cushions; a statue should not blush for its surroundings; the clear water of a fountain should not reflect grimaces. The Romans, and particularly the Pompeians, in spite of their "imperialistic" excesses, had a thoroughly Greek sense of complete beauty. No city can furnish more pre-eminent proof than Pompeii of the superiority of the education of the race. This all-powerful Roman people, by their origin and political development, pre- sumptuous and given to excess, allowed themselves to go unrestrained in their public manifestations, but, once in their own homes again, good sense returned and 216 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES the Greek ideal which they loved and upon which also they had been brought up, triumphed. This was more true, no doubt, at Pompeii, which was in itself somewhat Greek, than in any other Roman city. No doubt also the description that Pliny the Younger gives us of his Tuscan city indicates a little too lively materialism. In spite of that, and in this very de- scription, we find the harmony that Rome brought back from her Oriental conquests. In the Pompeian house, as in the triangular Forum and the Temple of Isis, it is Greece that rules with her perfect taste. Pompeii having the superiority of being a luxurious city, a city of pleasure, we naturally find here Roman life at its maximum of civilization. Of course a Saint Germain does not give a complete idea of French life, but, at least, it gives an exact idea of the tastes of the ruling classes of the twentieth century. Of all the cities and towns seated at the foot of Vesuvius, Pom- peii occupies the best place. Her neighbour Stabiae must have joined her once, as Trouville and Deauville join in our day, forming a vast seaside resort whose beach was supplemented by the rare addition of a great field for sports and other out-of-door recreations. The choice of this site between the sea and the moun- tain, on the edge of a plain, and with the distant view of the high hills, the restraint and the freedom of the placing all, also, prove the presence of the Greek PAL&OPOLIS 217 spirit in the very foundation of Pompeii. The build- ing of the Forum and the Temple of Jupiter at the right of the volcano bespeaks their sacred origin. One of the greatest difficulties in the way of the traveller's study of the ruins of Rome is their dryness. The mind must be perpetually rehabilitating. The skeleton is bare; it must be indefatigably covered with its flesh and dressed with its clothes. But Pompeii is dressed. The profound charm of Pompeii resides in its being so easy to understand. It is a beautiful book wide open where the dullest may read without fatigue, if not with discernment. The kings carried away to their own cabinets all the things that they excavated, but with what is left we can easily replace in our imaginations all that has disappeared. In seeing the atria and the peristylia we become more indulgent toward every sort of decoration not grand in itself, but adapted to its place. The Dancing Faun, the Bull, on the border of their impluvium, the bust of Ccecilius Jucundus, along its casing, and the great paintings of the cubicula are not perfect expressions of art, but they are all expressions of art perfectly adapted to their purpose which is to make the house fresh and pleasing. They represent nothing in particular, al- though based upon the old Greek mythology ; but they all tend towards the one end of offering something 218 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES charming to see. Even if the Child with the Goose does spit water into the marble basin, that expresses a more subtle thought than a mere jet of water in a dish. Verrocchio was moved by the same inspiration when he made the Child with the Fish that is now in the cortile of the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence. All this we see little by little, from door to door, from ostia to tablina; the awakening of life as we pass, like the flowers that bloomed at the passing of Proserpina. At the end of an hour we feel the ample toga upon our shoulders, freshly come back from the fuller, and when we enter the baths at Stabiae we make the motion of throwing the discus. Not a house in Pompeii that does not interest us. We find there the things that suit all tastes. The visitor may choose what pleases him best. Two or three, perhaps, may please less frivolous minds, and they are the houses found outside the Herculanean Gate. The spectacle of the Appian Way is here repro- duced, less grandiose, less ruined also, more reduced, but fuller, simpler, and more intimate; a street of tombs in the manner of that of Rome, ranking with it and having its flowery beauty. The family tombs, the pigeonholes with dusty urns, stand in line and capri- cious rank before us, each having its own personal physiognomy, so little of a funereal aspect that they rather suggest thoughts of grace and peace. What PAL&OPOLIS 219 prouder entrance could a city have than this under the happy and smiling inspection of its ancestors! The villas said to have been those of Cicero and Diomede shine among these tombs, opening above the walls upon the country that they embrace with a love as infinite as itself. It is an easy task to replace here, as everywhere else in Pompeii, the statues and frescoes and, above all, the thousand little objects now lodging in the Naples Museum. Mediocre as are the pictures judged by standards of art, they are friends now that we love them for their domestic life, and the memories to which we are obliged to have recourse, since they are no longer there, embellish them still more. Rings, bracelets, necklaces, cameos and intaglios, trinkets, stylets, tablets, cups, saucers, plates, scissors, needles, thimbles, all the instruments of all the professions, they leave their prim order in the Museum and are here with us, lying in their true places, ready for use. From the little Pompeian Museum we have brought the bodies of the very beings who lived in this long buried city and have set them at their ease in the tablinum to tell us of all they passed through, while, upon the monopodium we prepare the ccena from the cinderized foods we have stolen from the Naples Museum. This amusement of rehabilitating the people as they A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES lived in their own houses is the great joy of Pompeii which we must make the most of in spite of all the learned archaeologists are doing day after day to hinder us. Alas! the visitor to Pompeii has been obliged for several years to demolish much more than to recon- struct in his thought. If he wants to arrange under the porticoes and about the fountains all the little bronzes he stuffed into the pockets of his mind when he was at the Naples Museum and to spread upon the walls the load of frescoes he is carrying, he will have first to wipe out a good deal of the modern work of those too zealous scholars. Poor House of the Vettii, which the archaeologists especially admire and which is the most displeasing that an artist could find! The paintings are under glass; the cu- bicula have been made into cellars; the porticoes show beams that have been repainted or are entirely new; the triclinium is shut by great blinds; an iron handrail bars the peristylium, and jets of water spurt out indiscreetly. Poor House of the Silver Wedding, with atrium entirely reconstructed in iron and cement, bricks, and new gutters ! Poor Amorini, Centenario, Sallust, poor Forum down whose entire length runs a Decauville ! At every step we are outraged as rudely as the ruin, whose grotesque make-up is as repulsive to us as that picture which is said to be Giotto's, at Santa Chiara, in Naples, but which has disappeared PAL&OPOLIS 221 under a load of tinsel. The misfortune (and the punishment) of precise minds is their insensibility to the imagination. The beauty of a dream escapes them and is eternally lacking to them. They can never create. They know everything except the es- sential, the soul of things. How much more Pompeii lives in our minds than under their fingers! They have no confidence in the intelligence of the passing visitor, nor yet in his instinct ; under pretext of aiding him they impose upon him a task a hundred times more delicate than that of merely appreciating the ruins, that of trying to see where the ancient leaves off and the modern begins, to pull down walls, to throw the tiles of the roofs to the winds, to break and shatter the windows. They have wanted to give us a Pom- peii in which we need not be forced to create our own visions; but we must just the same, only before we can do so must we destroy in our imaginations the one they have given us. It would have been so simple not to touch what they found! What more need they have done than to gather up the things that were scattered about on the ground and carry them to the Museum? The aspect of these objects in the Museum is less falsified than among the novelties where they are preserved on the spot. The cleverest restorations can never bring back that which no longer exists. The poet only tells the truth when he tells his dream .4 FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES without ever pretending that it is anything but a dream. So should it be with ruins; they should speak their own thought to us, not that of others who have deciphered them and interpreted them and thereby falsified them. These restorations are the infliction of Pompeii. Her excavators, her experts have wanted to do too well ; and it is to be feared that they have lost to us forever the true vision of Pompeii which, if we had been left to the mere ruins, we might have approx- imated unto, at least. But what are these defects beside the wonder of the daily resurrection called up by each act of the visitors ? Pompeii is not dead. Nor has she come to life. Sim- ply, she continues to live. Let us touch these stones with respect. When they were swallowed up it was not to verify the wisdom of the fool who wrote upon the wall of one of the houses, where we see them today, the words SODOM, GOMORRAH. On the contrary, it was to keep for Goethe's posterity, immediate posterity too often showing itself ungrateful, the lesson of grandeur and beauty. EigKth Day IN MEMORY OF PLINY Hercvilanexim FTER passing the Carmine, following the Marinella and crossing the Se- beto, il bel Sebeto accolto in piccolo fluvio, as Sannazaro sings, the Nea- politan tramway passes through the easterly outskirts of the city. These suburbs, as suburbs should, seem to be trying to leave behind them the infamy and inequalities of the most sordid quarters of Naples. In the sunlight of a broad street this cynical misery is frightful to see. The killing sensation that oppresses me as I pass through this human renunciation is like that felt before certain phenomena of nature, such as the ruins of Messina, 223 224 or the sea of pebbles in the Puglia, the undreamt-of sensation of a hidden strength suddenly revealed, which makes us tremble most of all because we feel that it is irremediable that it is fatal as death. It is heartbreaking to see it ; even to read a description of it would be heartbreaking if any pen other than that of an apostle or a satirist could depict it. Of course it is the misery of the poor over whom we weep, but whom we cannot bring ourselves to touch with all our pity. We shrink within ourselves, we become small as men involuntarily feel themselves diminish in size when in the midst of some great cataclysm beyond their comprehension. Here, for example, at a place along the route called "the Granili" (for the great red building which is a granary and barracks) is a tall house on whose ground floor is a cheap eating-place for the workmen of the neighbouring factories. That is nothing extraordi- nary, is it? Yet one must have seen it to know what human abasement is, what sad beasts we are. Is it possible upon this earth of men that beings like our- selves can seat themselves at those tables oozing with grease mingled with soot and mud, that they can lay their bread upon tablecloths for there are table- cloths upon which have been spilled the glasses of at least three generations, and the gravy of a thousand plates, that they can eat what comes out of those pots IN MEMORY OF PLINY 225 boiling with the sickening odour of poisonous tripe and decayed vegetables which have gone through the form of being washed in the gutter ? Hungry though they may be, can human creatures eat from the plates that are passed to them from that dirty coal-hole where they are stacked in rows? Yet our brothers crowd in, their bare feet treading the dust diluted with who knows what liquid, and seat themselves to eat in the midst of the foulest refuse left by dogs and children ! We raise our eyes to avoid this fetid spectacle only to gaze upon another still sadder. Not one of these houses crowded together forming a continuous village from Naples to Torre del Greco that does not present a highly decorated front. They are covered with fes- toons and shells, arabesques and pinnacles, all in pink stone; they are like the pretty sweets bought in the little shops of the Granili. This Baroque architecture in the midst of such poverty and filth and serving as the homes of such stagnant humanity is strange, sad, and inexplicable until we remember that it was over this road that the kings of old used to travel from Naples to Portici, even as we are doing today. Re- membering how important it was to present a pleasing front to those kings, we read our history over again in this long stretch of theatrical scenery set for the pass- ing of the royal pomp. The pompous royalty has disappeared, the scenery remains for the lazzaroni to 15 226 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES raise their families in. Out of these great , pretentious palaces go the beings who seek their sustenance in the filthy holes of the Granili and not there alone, but for miles along this road, where we scan palace after palace, looking in vain for the oasis of a simple cabin. As we approach Portici, however, the houses be- come cleaner. Close-cropped gardens begin to show behind gates and beyond vaulted passages. Above the doors are seen little signs with the Italian equivalent of "To Let." The windows have green blinds, the roofs are surmounted by terraces; kiosks appear pointing towards the blue sky, and, in another moment, we are in sight of the shining sea. In fact, beyond the outskirts of the city, along this coast ex- tend innumerable villas where the families of the pros- perous business people of Naples come to breathe the pure air and to bathe in the sea during the summer months. The wonder is that they do not take posses- sion all along the way as far as San Giovanni a Teduc- cio and even to the Granili; but, although it is well understood that one must be somebody to have a villa at Portici, the villegianti the summerresidents attempt no redemption of the wretched suburbs they hurry through. Portici is an insignificant village in itself at the foot of Vesuvius, on the very lava of the volcano and upon the beginning of the first rise of its steep sides. Portici, but not its aspect, is continued IN MEMORY OF PLINY 227 by Resina, another village with all its twenty-five thousand inhabitants; that is to say, it is exclusively made up of factories and workmen drawn from the surrounding country. It is but another repetition of the filth and poverty we know so well by this time. Such pretty names, and it sounds so well (does it not ?) to say we are going from Portici to Resina. Cannot buried Herculaneum rise and throw off all these wretched pigeonholes and make herself known once more? Alas! that would be to scatter so many people, and the uncertain compensation of beauty troubles our consciences somewhat. None of us likes to think of the day that may come when some new disaster may change the form of this coast, yet it does not cause us much pain to think that the present form, which dates back scarcely three hundred years, is extremely liable to change. In looking at the new configuration of the places under which Herculaneum lies it is interesting to recall what has been said about it by Signor Giuseppe di Lorenzo, the able geologist, who is also one of the most refined artists and purest writers of modern Italy. He says: "The borders of the valley at the bottom of which Herculaneum sleeps are formed on the east by the Hill of Pugliano which is prolonged toward the north, bearing the park and castle of Portici, as far as the rocks of Granatello; on the south, bearing the 228 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES Villa Favorita, to the rocks of the same name. The valley is thus shut in on three sides; the fourth side, on the west, being the half mile of beach between Grana- tello and the Favorita. These sides of Pugliano and the properties of the Portici and Favorita villas are the exclusive product of two currents of lava which came down in 1634 with such rapidity that they reached the sea in one hour, covering different points on the coast between Portici and Torre Annunziata. It is that lava which gives the present aspect to the valley of Herculaneum, having changed it from quite the opposite character, since in rolling down to the sea, the lava followed the depression of the land. So, where the shore now rises, at Portici and Favorita, were two depressions, corresponding to the 'two rivers ' mentioned by Sisenna as bounding the promon- tory on which stood Herculaneum. But long before 1631 it was no longer possible to recognize the ancient topography of Herculaneum. Indeed, although the lavas of the seventeenth century definitely effaced the lines of the ancient valleys, they themselves were spread over masses of hardened cinder which, from many eruptions of the volcano, had been accumulating over the ancient city during fifteen hundred years, augmented by atmospheric agents and by the hand of man." A valley filled up and completely transformed with Author Royal Villa of Portici Author Herculaneum and Resina Alinar Resina IN MEMORY OF PLINY 229 a town of twenty-five thousand souls hanging over a hole averaging twenty-five yards deep; that is what we see of Herculaneum today. It is horrible and touching enough to draw tears to our eyes. The lava, broken by a pick in a field that happened to be vacant, reveals to us a dry, grey wall, ugly and forbidding. Here and there shoring holds up accumulations of earth and houses perched in precarious situations. It seems like a sort of abandoned quarry extending an unknown distance, rich with beauties we can only attempt to imagine, crushed as they are under the accumulated efforts of nature and of man. Seen from below, Resina is like the rude custodian of a vast sepulchre, the weight of barbarians upon a land that should make them blush by its refinement and grace. One thinks of it as of Italy when it was crushed under the hordes of the Huns; as if the men up there were striving to keep the beautiful city from coming again to a life which would humiliate them. How many years have the excavations of Herculaneum been undertaken ? Discoveries began in 1713. A Frenchman, Emmanuel de Lorraine, Prince d'Elbeuf, having married the daughter of the Prince de Salsa, bought, to decorate the villa he was building near Portici, some stucco work found by a peasant at the bottom of a well in his field. Emmanuel soon acquired the field; he went down the well and brought up out of it a Hercules. 230 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES In 1738 Charles III. of Naples bought the entire prop- erty and continued the excavations ; but these were stopped in 1776. Pompeii presented fewer difficulties, and Resina was growing. Work was resumed some- what under Murat and something has been done lately, but the entire space that has been opened is no more than a good-sized opening for the construction of an underground railway station. A street running the length of the excavation is bordered by houses whose severity contrasts with the nice prettiness of those of Pompeii. To the porch of one of them clings a grow- ing bush. That is all there is of Herculaneum, yet it is a ruin certainly richer and more purely beautiful than the other. Herculaneum was a simpler city than Pompeii, less invaded by the rich extravagance of the times, consequently more strictly Greek, and it had been respected by the earthquake of '63. When the excavations are seriously undertaken what may we not find! A few years ago, the Italian Government voted toward the opening up of Herculaneum a sum corre- sponding to about 60,000 or $300,000 (to be exact, 1,500,000 lire), a small fortune that will be fruitful in the hands of the artist and scholar, Signer Spinazzola, director of the Naples Museum, whose excavations at Paestum are a pledge of what we may expect of this long hidden city. In the meantime we break our skulls MEMORY OF PLINY 231 in vain against the lava wall. Sad Herculaneum, so rich and so poor at the same time, so denuded of all attractiveness and yet so abounding in beauty ! Yet, let us at least ask of Herculaneum what she can give us today: at first her exalted and intense emotion of desire, of will also her contribution to the different little problems occupying our minds, the different aspects under which the bronzes at the Mu- seum present themselves, the green-blue bronzes of Pompeii, the green black of Herculaneum. Some experts claim that this difference is due to the original polish, a theory that naturally leads us to believe that the bronzes discovered at Herculaneum in the eight- eenth century now have their original tint. Others contend that the colours are the result of the burial of the cities, Pompeii having been buried under pumice stone or gravel of lava and cinders, whereas Hercula- neum was inundated by hot mud. Signer Giuseppe de Lorenzo, conscientious geologist as he is, has studied the mineral composition of the volcanic mat- ter here deposited and the salts deposited upon the bronzes, observing their reactions; that is to say, he has investigated the action of salts and lavas in their essences and in the traces of their activity now con- gealed. His conclusions solve a scientific problem and also fix a point in history, at the same time affording us consolation for the privations we feel in not having 232 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES Herculaneum already revealed since, thanks to Signer de Lorenzo's investigations, the excavations may be carried on in the future with far better results than could have been obtained without them. It is not a recent theory that the two cities were bathed in two different sorts of lava, one of fire and one of mud. It was known and discussed in the eighteenth century. The author of the Disertatio isagogica, who had long studied and excavated in the buried city, was on his guard against the false hypothesis of torrents of mud which, by their very composition, would have spread into the depressions and would not have cov- ered uniformly both heights and depths. Now we know that Herculaneum, according to the concurrent testimony of ancient writers, was situate upon a promontory flanked by valleys through which rivers flowed. Then, as the level of the streets thus far uncovered are from 14 to 17 metres above sea level, at a distance of a little more than two hundred metres from the sea, the promontory of Herculaneum could not, as Strabo says, have ended otherwise than by a sharp descent to the sea, and the two valleys flanking it could hot have been very deep. If tor- rents of mud came down here they must have spread throughout the valleys and not over the height of land. "There is still better testimony against the hypo- IN MEMORY OF PLINY 233 thesis that the first destruction of Herculaneum was due to currents of mud. Indeed, it is clear that the streams of mud, or ' water lava, ' as it is called, require water, much water, to become liquid, that nothing less than a veritable deluge would be enough to make the matter thrown out by an eruption form a stream that would run down and fill these valleys. Such a quantity of water could only come by rain. Did any one see such torrential rains at the beginning of the eruption of the year '79 ? No writer speaks of them, and their silence is corroborated by the geo- logical studies of the matter which covered Pompeii, in which the top cinders indicate that a very deluge fell upon the last, or almost the last, of the deposit made by the eruption, when the city was buried under three meters of lapilli or grit of lava and pumice. The case was not widely different in 1906; the rain and subsequent mass of mud did not make their appear- ance until three days after the great eruptive phase that destroyed Ottaiano. From these deductions it is now believed that Herculaneum was buried after Pompeii, the strange conclusion being that Pompeii, lying at the greater distance from the crater, was destroyed by the fall of volcanic matter that burst out of the crater, whereas Herculaneum, much nearer and under the fire so to speak, was untouched by all that matter and waited, streets empty and houses in place, 234 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES to be buried under the torrents of mud poured down by the subsequent rains. " Nothing in this hypothesis is contrary to the testi- mony of the ancient writers nor to geological analysis. In fact, Pliny the Younger, in his first letter, said that his uncle after having noted the grandiose pine which marked the beginning of the eruption, and after having received the call for help brought by the sailors from Retina, the port of Herculaneum, immediately armed some quadriremes and set forth. That was the first day of the eruption, and, having a favourable wind from the north, the commander Pliny soon neared Retina; but approach to the port was impossible be- cause of the cinders, lapilli, and volcanic matter of all sorts falling upon the vessel and into the sea." Al- ready the sea bottom had been suddenly raised and the mountain, by caving in, rendered the coast un- approachable. Pliny, therefore, was obliged to steer off and go to Stabiae where, still dense and perilous, as they were to prove to him, the falling pumice and asphyxiating cinders permitted him to land. In this letter Pliny the Younger makes no reference to the hypothetical torrential rains, causing the no less imaginary torrents of mud. He describes mi- nutely and with the precision of a modern geologist the divers matters thrown out by the volcano and falling thick and hot upon Herculaneum and the places near IN MEMORY OF PLINY 235 it from the first day of the eruption and in much greater quantities than at Stabiae, the neighbour of Pompeii. This matter was made up of cinders, pum- ice, grit, and gravel of lava or lapilli and pieces of rock coming from the Somma, broken and thrown down by the explosions. The soil upon which Herculaneum lies is composed of these different ingredients, formed in a thick paste of cinder more or less compact as it has been more or less agglomerated by its own weight and by the carbonate of calcium deposited by filtering water. This cinder paste contains an infinite number of pieces of pumice ranging from the size of a pea to that of a melon, the same pumice stones that covered Pompeii to a depth of two metres and a half. The only difference was that at Pompeii, because of the distance and the wind which carried the smallest of the stones, they are of an almost uniform size of a nut, whereas at Herculaneum, nearer the crater, which, no doubt, also opened wider on the side toward the coast, the stones fell in greater quantities and in all sizes, mingling with the cinders and other matter. It was exactly the same kind of volcanic matter that, without water or anything else, under the eyes of wit- nesses who have left us their description, burst out of the earth in September, 1548, forming Monet Nuovo between Pouzzuoli and Baia. The parallel is clear that the same tufa covering Herculaneum owes its origin to 236 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES the rapid accumulation of an enormous quantity of cinders, pumice, gravel, dross, and rocks which buried the entire region here under a crust ten yards thick. The compact character of this tufa is due to the weight of later eruptions from which Pompeii was exempt, to time, and, above all, to the carbonate of calcium deposited by the water filtering through it during two thousand years. This compactness varies according to the amount of water thus filtering into the masses, variations such as are notable also in the Phlegraean Fields. In the highest parts of Hercula- neum the excavators are beginning to find layers of soft matter due, evidently, to the alluvion formed when the rains fell, as were the pisolitic cinders of the higher layers of Pompeii. This theory, based upon scientific geological investigation, stands corroborated by the description of Pliny the Younger. "In view of this, it is astonishing to hear any more talk about the alleged conservation of the problematic patina of the bronzes of Herculaneum, for everyone knows that there is nothing antique about that patina, that it is the work of the excavators and restorers of the eighteenth century who scraped, rubbed down, and varnished the masterpieces of Herculaneum and Pom- peii, giving them the smooth and brilliant surface wrongly admired, since it robbed the bronzes of the most delicate details of their modelling. All the IN MEMORY OF PLINY 237 bronzes of Herculaneum, when they were taken out, were covered by a malachite green crust to which the tufa adheres. This we may see from the bronzes of the Villa Pison which owe to their artistic inferiority their escape of the polishing treatment. Still more is this seen in the bronzes found at Herculaneum in 1875, now exposed in the Naples Museum; they retain in- tact the malachite green crust with which they were covered when they were buried. The only difference between the bronzes of Herculaneum and those of Pom- peii consists in the fact that the latter were lying in a layer of pumice which allowed the rains of the centuries to run through it, and, consequently, are covered, par- tially or entirely, with a substance called azurite, that is blue carbonate of copper which contains more an- hydrous carbon than malachite; whereas the green car- bonate of copper, which has less of anhydrous carbon, consequently more water, which covers all the bronzes thus far found at Herculaneum, means simply that the matter in which they have been lying had been more impregnated with water than that covering Pompeii. Neither the bronzes of Pompeii nor of Herculaneum have today any traces of their original patina. "Besides, how could any one imagine that the bronzes of Herculaneum could be preserved intact under a damp soil for almost two thousand years ! A moment's reflection should be enough to convince one Alinari Mercury in Repose National Museum, Naples Dancing Women National Museum, Naples Alinari IN MEMORY OF PLINY 239 Phlegrasan Fields are essentially the same, it must not be forgotten that the latter forms a summit whereas that of Herculaneum is at the base of a mountain. One sheds the water, the other receives it. From this point Signer de Lorenzo concludes : " It may be affirmed without fear of mistake that the tufa of Herculaneum is a mass of cinders, pumice, gravel, and rock thrown out by Vesuvius in '79 and covered by later alluvions and other matter deposited by successive eruptions, and made compact by the carbonate of calcium deposited by the infiltration of water through the subsoil of the country." At the base of this tufa, in a house that has been discovered, is the beginning of a gallery in which was found the famous Bearded Dionysus, some manuscripts of Plato's, besides manuscripts of this city celebrated among all the cities of its day for its literary wealth, the recovery of which, if they should all be found, may mean to the world a complete renewal of the Greek and Latin culture. The day is near at hand now when the excavations will be carried on, the day when competent scientists will be working not for the private collections of Portici, but for the Naples Mu- seum, for us. Before taking the tram back to Naples let us go in- to the park of the Villa Portici, look through the iron gates of the old palace surrounded by its flower garden, 2 4 o A FOR TNICHT IN NAPLES and take a long stroll over its abandoned paths. All the ghosts of the Bourbons will walk beside us, from Charles III. to Francesco II. Perhaps then, thinking of the greatness of their epoch and their stupidity, you will feel indulgent toward them, for what they did here. The Savoy monarchy, in deciding at length to seriously undertake the Herculaneum excavations, has under- stood what it must do if it would not stand inferior in this matter to the preceding monarchies which it sur- passes in all other matters. Disinterested scholars will follow up the fruitful task at the end of which lies a glory that can never radiate from Pompeii, for we know her now and that she hides no rarity and no possible novelty. NintK Day THE TWO UBUS, KINGS OF NAPLES Vomero, Ferdinand IV. of Naples, I. of tKe Two Sicilies Castellammare, Ferdinand II BOVE the Villa Nazionale, on the very edge of the hill at whose foot Naples stretches out, and dominating all the bay from Miseno to Minerva, is a great park with trees a hundred years old and thickets of camellia bushes threaded with pleasant paths. It is the ancient Villa Floridiana, today divided into the two villas Floridiana and Lucia. The first has a great white house in the midst of a magnificent park with a ruined temple and a minia- w 241 2.|2 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES ture antique theatre, wonderfully arranged with bushes serving as the scenery and a semicircle of steps decorated with growing oleanders and camellias. The Villa Lucia is a large red house giving upon a terrace where, on the occasion of the visit of a foreign fleet, the ships' officers have enjoyed the memorable sight of the illumination of the harbour. Indeed, Ad- miral Corsi used to receive the sailors here, also, with the courteous hospitality continued by his widow to visitors desirous of seeing the house with the Pompeian peristyle built by Ferdinand in 1815. Soon after he purchased the estate for his morganatic wife, the Duchess of Floridia. In these two villas, Ferdinand IV. of Naples (or, giving him the title he assumed in 1816, Ferdinand I. of the Two Sicilies) passed the last ten years of his life, between two infamies. The Villa Floridiana is now the property of an American lady, Mrs. Harrison, who does the honours with infinite kindness to any stranger who can present himself with the recommendation of a friend. The bedroom in the Villa Lucia, where Ferdinand died suddenly in the middle of the night and from which his body was carried in all haste to the royal palace, and the dining-room, decorated in a very pleasing Baroque style, remain as they were used by him who might be called the most abominable of kings if he had not had children and if we were not THE TWO UBUS, KINGS OF NAPLES 243 in the country of the Joans of Anjou. The park, al- though divided in two and somewhat cut up, also remains as it was then. At the Villa Lucia one sees, among other things, the bridge of access that Fer- dinand ordered built. A bold engineer made it entirely out of the small jugs in the form of the am- phora that we see in the streets of Naples mounted on little carts and full of lemonade. The jug is called mummara, and when the Neapolitans meet a young girl with firm, well-shaped figure they murmur: "0 bella mummarella!" Ferdinand was never confident about this bridge of fragile mummara and would only pass over it behind a regiment. As we wander over these shady paths why do we not meet the ghost of Ferdinand, called the Nasone, the Big Nose? It is for him that we stroll here and for that monstrous . nose that used to appear after the fashion of the Satyrs among the branches of the trees. Never did Nature ornament a visage, unless it were of a tapir or an elephant, with such an appendage. There are three copies of his death mask, one at San Martino, one at the Cuomo Museum, and one in the possession of the Duchessa Guardia-Lombarda. Fer- dinand was but a nose, a veritable pachydermatous trumpet from his birth; a nose that became as long as the thigh of an infant of three months, as broad as the hand of a policeman, a terrible and solemn thing 244 A. FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES which, if Ferdinand had not passed his life in running away from danger, might have played the part in battle of the white plume of Henry of Navarre. What impression would that nose have made upon us if its master had lodged behind it any honest senti- ment, any ideas? His most intimate and blindest companions admitted his utter stupidity. Foreigners and discerning people found him abject. We must consider him from his birth to fairly judge him. King at eight years of age, subject to the council of the Regency presided over by Tanucci, he showed but one inclination; for sport. Tanucci took his measure at once; not a difficult thing to do we may believe and that measure was of a tool, an instrument to be taught docility and, for the rest, turned over to the masters of the hunt. In a few years Ferdinand became a colossus. He passed his time riding after the deer and the wild boar, breaking horses, contesting prizes at the races, and fishing with nets at night on the bay. After the hunt, at Portici, he used to amuse himself by dressing up as a tavern keeper and pouring out wine for himself and his companions to drink. At Trianon royalty played at being miller and bailiff ; at Portici the King was a servant. He ate like an ogre, like a Bour- bon, it is true. He slept eighteen hours out of the twenty-four. According to the recollections of a courtesan, he was never seen to open a book ; the read- THE TWO UBUS, KINGS OF NAPLES 245 ing of Voltaire on the part of his subjects was, later, punished by death. It was also insupportable to him to sign the royal acts. He had them signed in his presence by a stamp that he always carried with him. He ordered that there be no inkstands on the council tables; the deliberations were, therefore, the sooner finished. Eight years after his father, the good Charles III., left the throne of Naples for that of Spain in 1767 when he was sixteen years old, Ferdinand was declared of age, and the next step was to see him married. As a Bourbon of France, he was given an Austrian wife, Marie Caroline, the sister of Marie Antoinette. Twenty years after he had had eleven children, at least Marie Caroline had presented him with them. Caroline was a great battle horse to whom Ferdinand, always hunting and returning home dead with fatigue, was but a poor mate. She found consolation in the Prince Caramanico and he was succeeded in 1776 by Acton, an Irishman in the service of Caroline's brother, the Duke of Tuscany. Soon after his coming to Naples he was appointed Minister of the Navy, be- coming all powerful, taking the place of Tanucci, who was driven out because of his opposition to the Queen's taking a place in the council. She purposed govern- ing in the place of her husband, despised by her as by everyone; and, stimulated by the example of her A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES brother of Tuscany, she sustained Acton in carrying on Tanucci's work. The reforms of Charles III. were completed and ex- tended by others. The check which he had found it necessary to put upon the power and wealth of the clergy was followed up under his son. All the reve- nues of the vacant offices of bishops and abbots were collected in the King's name and dedicated to public work. Some convents were suppressed; eighty-eight in Sicily. Mortmain was limited, and all wills in favour of monks were annulled. It was forbidden to have more than ten priests (later more than five) to every thousand souls. Only sons were prohibited from taking holy orders. Marriage was submitted to the civil jurisdiction. Surplice fees were put under a tariff. Allegiance to the Pcpe, which went back to the time of the Normans, was suppressed. Methods of education were reorganized and taken out of the hands of the priests. The communes retained the freedom of their own administration ; but in such a matter the task was a difficult one for a king whose power lay in the strength of his nobles. Only Murat, without ties, could definitely break up the Neapolitan feudalism. The archives of the kingdom were organized, permit- ting the establishment of official survey and registry of land, registry of mortgage from which proceeded the definite rights of property and inheritance. A THE TWO UBUS, KINGS OF NAPLES 247 number of f armed-out imposts were abolished. The courts were made less arbitrary, although torture still existed. Even a commercial code was established. It may be said that in 1790 the Kingdom of Naples was in advance of all Europe. Certain principles of the Napoleonic Code flourished there. Acton, Min- ister of War, of Marine, Captain General, protected by an ambitious queen, followed the course laid out by Tanucci except in one point, and that point worried to desperation the old King Charles III. over in Madrid, who, in 1788, died a prey to the great anxiety over the fate of the kingdom he had recreated. That point was the foreign policy. For Marie Caro- line there was but one alliance, the Austrian. She dragged Naples into the German road. Ferdinand would have allowed himself to be allied to the Grand Turk if only he might be allowed to hunt. The French Revolution facilitated the realization of the Queen's plans. During the hours of the events of the 5th and 6th of October Ferdinand was at Vienna marrying his two daughters to archdukes and his oldest son to an archduchess. The news of a king and a queen (his own wife's sister) driven out of their palace made his teeth chatter with fear, while his family-in-law shiv- ered and vowed vengeance. Acton joined the chorus from distant Naples. The King and Queen returned home, but not without throwing themselves at the feet 248 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES of the Pope, though he had been Naples' enemy for fifty years. The arrival of the aunts of Louis XVI. augmented the terror, and, under their influence, everything was changed in the flash of an eye. Fer- dinand showed himself for the magnificent coward that he was. "To the kings who make war on us we will send liberty!" This utterance, pronounced before the Tribune of the Constituent Assembly at Paris, rever- berated through Naples like the detonation of an ex- ploding bomb; the Neapolitans were both prostrated and illuminated by it. Liberty! There was the cause of the unhappiness of kings ! Foolish Ferdinand who had been teaching his subjects that road for so many years ! And Ferdinand saw himself taking the way to Varennes if the people did not tear him to pieces ! If he hoped to live, liberty must be suppressed and all its germs exterminated. Ferdinand had been asleep for thirty years, but he was awake now ! In the first place he must be armed, ready to join the coali- tion in case it was formed ; it would be a useful measure even if he did not set forth to war. Besides, it was im- portant to know what the Neapolitans were thinking. A police was organized which received all sorts of in- formation. The clergy, too, might be employed doubly; cajoled and given instruction. French books were prohibited. French refugees were arrested at THE TWO UB US, KINGS OF NAPLES 249 the frontier. All reunions were interdicted. Punish- ment by whipping was re-established. People were imprisoned upon the simple denunciation of an in- former. A State junta was instituted, in which was set up the Minister of Police, Medicis. The lazzaroni, that is to say all those whom poverty had driven into the capital from the country and who followed all sorts of trades in Naples, especially those without a name, were gathered into a military body a body ready for any savagery for him who fed and paid them. The Neapolitan fleet soon joined that of the English before Toulon, but Bonaparte appeared, Toulon was delivered, and the fleet returned to Naples. Then Ferdinand was more afraid than ever and took pre- cautions according to his nature. He took the money out of all the banks of the realm, lining his own pockets and ruining his people by way of being prepared for the worst. Whoever might be denounced as a liberal was arrested and tried secretly ; his defence, sustained only by an advocate named by the King, was written, not pleaded; the case was tried in the presence of the accused who had not the right to open his mouth, and the judgment was pronounced behind closed doors by an unequal number of judges so that the accused could not have the benefit of a tie. The sentence was exe- cuted without appeal and immediately, after torture. Medicis was the most powerful man in the realm. He 250 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES was young and good-looking. The Queen did not fail to give him her usual proofs of admiration, which aroused Acton to accuse him of conspiracy, whereupon the King made Medicis prisoner at Gasta. But he was to come back. Notwithstanding all precautions, the success of the French Revolution augmented Ferdinand's fears to such a degree that he signed a treaty with the Republic, although he violated it straightaway, in fear of Eng- land mingled with a delirium of joy after the events of Aboukir. Nelson came into Neapolitan waters, and then, under the protection of that thunder of war which destroyed a fleet at anchor, he felt that he could dare everything. Lady Hamilton then became the idol of the court of Naples. When Nelson was smitten by her, nothing was refused to that plaything whom an old man, Hamilton the English Ambassador, had had the audacity to marry. Emma Hamilton became Nelson's mistress and the most intimate friend of Marie Caroline was even invited to share Her Majesty's bed. Acton forbore to treat Emma as he had done Medicis, preferring to make use of her. Ferdinand was overjoyed with his good fortune. The French were going to be crushed, after the Nea- politans had been butchered. Mack was called from Austria and put in command of forty thousand men, an army of brigands and lazzaroni which was easily el- THE TWO UBUS, KINGS OF NAPLES 251 bowed out of the way by Championnet on his march to Naples. Ferdinand was ready to fly when the news was brought him, and the court was ready to fly with him ; but he bethought him of his pennies and tarried for three days to put his gold in casks, to pack jewels and antique statues and draw the capital out of the banks before, under Lady Hamilton's guidance, Fer- dinand, Marie Caroline, and their children, also Acton, fled by night to an English vessel that set sail at once for Palermo. A terrible storm overtook them and Ferdinand, thinking that his last hour had come, cried out to Acton and his wife before everyone, " It is your fault; you two live in sin and God is punishing me! " In spite of wave and wind they arrived at Palermo and Ferdinand smiled again at everyone. Life went on as usual, including the company of the beautiful Emma, while Championnet entered Naples and or- ganized the Parthenopean Republic. How could it last, how could a republic be maintained, in Europe of that epoch, by a people who had never governed them- selves? At any rate there were the best intentions in the Neapolitan Republic and some excellent reali- zations. Championnet was often importunate, not only by his necessary presence, but by his tactless interference; but soon, before Marengo, the ill turn of affairs in France calle'd him home. His departure left Naples open to the army of the Holy Faith. This 252 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES army, whose commander was Cardinal Ruff o and whose officers were the most celebrated brigand chiefs of Europe, like Fra Diavolo and Mammone, had begun its operations in Calabria, and, slowly, surely, method- ically pillaging, torturing, burning its way, it advanced towards Naples. Ferdinand from his safe distance excited this brutal horde to the greatest implacability, and covered Fra Diavolo with flattering attentions as he cajoled Lady Hamilton who was loved by Nelson. Behind Fra Diavolo and Nelson, Ferdinand felt him- self so fearless that when Ruffo called him to Naples he went, in Nelson's ship and without Marie Caroline. He wanted to work himself, with his own hands, and people should see if he was afraid! He arrived in Nelson's ship, well surrounded by the squadron, and there re- ceived Ruffo who told his tale of all that had happened, announcing the capitulation of the Republicans which insured his honour, and security of life and property, as well as giving him leave to depart for Toulon or to remain in safety in Naples. The vessels were already unfurling sail. This capitulation was signed by Ruffo in the name of the King and by the representatives of England and Russia. Standing on Nelson's deck, surrounded by the British squadron, Ferdinand de- manded of Ruffo if he were making him the laughing stock of the world by treating with rebellious and traitorous subjects. He tore up the capitulation, THE TWO UBUS, KINGS OF NAPLES 253 throwing the pieces in the face of the Cardinal who, for his own part, was not overscrupulous. The depart- ing vessels were disarmed, the emigrants thrown in- to prison, the massacre begun. We all know of the death of Admiral Caraccioli, guilty of having served the Republic as a soldier, and the shame that tarnished Nelson's name that of having hanged him at the yard arm of his own ship. Ferdinand took care not to land, resolved to keep under the English Admiral's wing so long as there remained a Republican alive in Naples. Thirty thousand persons in the prisons were to be gotten rid of before he returned to his own. The courts of 1791 resumed their functions, more terrible than ever. Ferdinand's knees knocked with fear, but he could command himself enough to curse those who had brought it upon him. The world should see that although he had fled in a moment of cowardice, he returned a hero, ready for everything because duty demanded it of him and because Nelson stood be- side him. Was Caroline not there to further his under- takings ? He did not need her ; he alone would act and let it be seen that it was he who was the master, the King! It was indeed he, that is to say, a mixture of ferocity, stupidity, cowardice, and hypocrisy. To put matters through the more quickly, offenders were judged in private, the accused in chains before his judge. 254 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES Some heroic scenes were enacted. Fiano the Younger appeared before the famous Speciale. He was inno- cent; but, from Palermo, Marie Caroline, whom per- haps he had disdained, made known her desire to be rid of him. Speciale, who had been Piano's friend from childhood, threw himself on his neck, saying: " I will save you. Say such and such things and you are free!" Fiano, moved to tears, with his friend's arms about him, did as he was told, but, avowing it all, was hanged an hour later. . . . Count Ruvo, in- sulted by the Judge Sambuti, interrupted him, as he shook his manacled fists under the judge's nose, with the exclamation: "It is these chains which make you insolent!" For which outbreak he was led away and killed, his trial unfinished. . . . Domenico Cirello, Ferdinand's physician, was asked his age and condition, to which he answered: "Sixty years. Phy- sician under the Monarchy, representative of the people under the Republic." "And what are you in my presence?" asked Speciale, grinning. "A hero," was the answer. Out in the roads Ferdinand's nose sniffed the breeze at the making of every fresh corpse, but the city smelt abominably in those days, since everyone, at least all of the cultivated classes, were of the same stuff as Cirello. When the King felt that he had thoroughly terrified his subjects he who knew so well the terrors of well-nigh all sorts of fear he set THE TWO UBUS, KINGS OF NAPLES 255 sail again, without having stepped ashore, returning to Palermo, where Marie Caroline received him with gratitude. Meantime, the reverses of France were accentuated. The hour came for the coalition to divide the spoils. Marie Caroline started for Vienna with Lady Hamilton and Nelson to demand Ferdinand's share. On their way the thunder of Marengo broke over their heads, and the Queen entered the palace of her nephew still the German Emperor, Francis II. with supplications that her State be saved. She returned to Naples with her head low, but found the King calmed by the news of Marengo. Never were the acts of any man so utterly subject to cowardice. From his birth to his death it was easy to divine what was going on about him by his manifestations of pusillanimity. After Trafalgar he reopened his hostilities, although he had signed a treaty with France. Then Napoleon was angry and sent down his army to throw Ferdinand out of the kingdom. The coward bawled madly until the coalition heard and sent him some Russians and some English. But the man knew nothing except flight. At Velletri he was disguised in order to escape the battle, but returning in high glee over his stratagem to Caserta, and presenting himself in his togs to the Queen, she drove him out of her room. Then he fled once more to Palermo while his kingdom was ruled by 256 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES Napoleon. In 1806 came Joseph Bonaparte and after him Murat whose name is blessed to this day in Naples for the good measures he introduced to relieve the down-trodden people. Living quietly at Palermo, Ferdinand saw the year 1815, wherein he might return to his realm, under- standing, however, that he could not show himself either hard to please or rigourous. Without the Aus- trian army that was installed here, he could not have come, so, if he did not want to be assassinated, he must mind what he did. No less filled with fear and cowardice than ever, he was honey in person. Assum- ing the title of Ferdinand I. of the Two Sicilies, he did not disturb the functionaries of Murat in the fulfilment of their functions; everyone remained in his place, retaining his rank. Ferdinand talked of nothing now but his love of his people. He watched them, however, but consented to do whatever was wanted of him if only they would let him enjoy life in peace, at least not frighten him too often. The Car- bonari gave him one good fright, however, in 1820 not a long one, because he granted them everything they wanted. With tears in his eyes, his son weeping with him, the two rivalling each other in terror, they swore to support the Constitution and forbade that they should be obeyed if ever they retracted. At the same time Ferdinand was pouring his troubles into THE TWO UBUS, KINGS OF NAPLES 257 the ear of the Austrian Emperor, imploring him to get him out of them. Got out he was. Called to Laybach, where it was intimated that he should abolish the Con- stitution, a bad example for the peoples of Europe, it is said his nose grew still larger that day from satis- faction and sheer delight at the prospect of avenging himself on those who had obliged him to show his cowardice. He showed it once more, however, for although he wanted to go back to Naples himself instead of being contented to send his orders and a representative, such as Canosa from whom Stendhal took certain traits to portray his immortal Count Mosca in La Chartreuse de Parme, he did not dare to come back except behind the Austrian army. It was a double prudence; his personal safety and an air of saying to his people, "You see, the Austrians have forced my hand." It would have been touching if it had not been heart-breaking. The new program was simple: "To leave unpunished no error committed since the beginning of the reign (1759) ; to draw up an exact list of all the vengeances to be paid off upon the men of all epochs from the first movement in 1793 up to 1820; to punish by death, prison, or exile every adversary of absolutism ; to do away with judgments as a means of avoiding slow processes; to punish promptly and under no other rule than the will of the King ; to efface all the amnesties that had been sworn 17 258 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES to on the altar. ' ' The militia were dismissed, universi- ties and schools were closed, the torture bell rang every day, and books were put upon the Index and burned. Even the catechism was replaced by another which spoke not of the patria, but of the throne; and the for- eign army was recompensed by honours and prebend- aries in gratitude for its occupation which gave the King courage for the rascality he now enjoyed for the rest of his life. Medicis came back, replacing Canosa who was con- sidered too liberal. That was all the change that took place. Ferdinand passed his time in the gardens of the Villa Floridiana. Before the end of the exile, in 1814, Marie Caroline had died suddenly in the course of a journey in Austria. Fifty days later Ferdinand married Lucia Migliaco, daughter of Vincenzo Duca di Floridia and of Dorotea Borgia. She was the widow of Benedetto Grif eo, Principe di Partana. She was born at Syracuse in 1770, and at the age of forty-five, when she became Ferdinand's wife, she had five children, four sons and a daughter. Was the daughter Ferdinand's child? If so, it would show that Lucia, who fre- quented the court at Palermo, had been attached to Ferdinand since the days of exile in Sicily. It may have been so, but there is no certainty established. What is certain is that Ferdinand in his letters to Lucia never speaks of her sons, although he always THE TWO UBUS, KINGS OF NAPLES 259 has a tender word for the little Marianina. But why did he marry Lucia? Up to this time his habit with women would be enough to justify all our dislike for him if we knew nothing else against him. Whenever he obtained the favours of a lady of the Court he ran to tell his good fortune to Marie Caroline who promptly ordered Ac- ton to see that she was exiled. The Duchess of Lus- ciano, upon being sent away, succeeded in making her way into the King's apartments disguised as a man and gave herself the satisfaction of spitting upon the huge nose which only sniffed at her. The Duchess of Cassano refused Ferdinand's attentions, but was obliged to leave the Court like the poor ladies who accepted them. One day when the future King, Francis, mildly reproached his father for his second marriage, Fer- dinand said to him, "Think of your mother, think of your mother!" He had not even the decency to re- spect Caroline's motherhood. The bust of Lucia at the Villa Lucia and the miniature of her in the Cuomo Museum explain her success with the King by the contrast between her gentle, always smiling, plump and angelic face and the angular, scolding, imperious old war-horse that was Caroline. Ferdinand said in 1823, "How fortunate I am! I have a wife who al- lows me to do anything I wish to, and a Minister who 260 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES does not allow me to do anything." Such was his ideal of a king. He had brought Lucia with him when he returned to Naples, first installed her in the Palazzo Partana, which we still see in the Piazza dei Martiri, then at the Palazzo Reale and, at length at the Villa Floridiana which he bought from the Prince de Torella who had it from Murat's Minister, Saliceti. It is said that Saliceti had acquired it from a certain Lulo whom Caroline had settled there. Ferdinand and Lucia occupied it during the spring and summer, and Lucia remained here when Ferdinand went to Caserta or Portici for his hunting. We have traces of these movings in letters which throw much light on the writers. "Madame, there is a strong wind blowing and I have killed six wolves." ' ' I have slept like a little pig. " "I trust that the cas- tor oil has had good effect with thee." "Yesterday I had the colic." Lucia also entertained him with her troubles. Canosa and Medici were flogging and strangling folk; the Austrian cannon were mounting guard; but Ferdinand was happy. His family, too, was kindly attentive toward Lucia who kept the abject old man within bounds. Even she was afraid of a dancing girl one day, but the good housekeeper triumphed. It was to her Francis must needs turn when he wanted something of his royal father in Madrid; and even the saintly Marie Christine, wife of THE TWO UBUS, KINGS OF NAPLES 261 him who was afterwards Ferdinand II., wrote to her affectionately. At length, on the 4th of June, 1825, Ferdinand died, in the Pavillion Lucia of the Floridiana. In his will he recommended his heirs to permit his "good and faithful companion" to retain her apart- ments in the royal palace, ordered the continuance of her annual pension of four thousand, five hundred ducats a month equal to some 8,000 or $40,000. Within a year Lucia followed him, at the age of fifty- four years. You may see her tomb in San Ferdinando, the little church opposite the Teatro San Carlo. Marianina inherited Floridiana. She married the Count Santangelo whose heirs sold it to the present proprietor. The Villa Lucia reverted to Grifeo who gradually cut it up. The house and remains of the garden were sold to the Polish Count Tyschievitch who sold them to an Englishman, Mr. Young, from whom they were bought by the late Italian Admiral Corsi. Ferdinand carried with him to his tomb the strong- est execrations and the most justified contempt ever poured out upon king. Stupid, vicious, currying favour, he gave voluptuous nourishment to every form of baseness. How could such an abject figure, such a contemptible coward masquerading in royalty escape satire ? Did Alfred Jarry think of him when he 262 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES wrote the Ubu-roi? I think not, but the psychologist, as often happens, divined a real character, for Ubu is Ferdinand, crying, " Forward ! Or rather no, back- ward, gentlemen of Poland!" The Phynance horse he only rode. And the filth! It is all Ferdinand. Naples made by the Joans, cultivated by the Ara- gonese, pampered by the viceroys, accepted this king as the farmer accepts bad weather. Dazzled and stupefied, merely by the lightning flash of the Par- thenopaean Republic, the Neapolitans were not aroused by Murat; but in the year 1848, they showed that they had learned something, and when Garibaldi appeared in 1860, he had only to gather the harvest from the seed sown by the handsome Joachim upon the ground prepared by Ferdinand. The only good thing that that sinister man was ever able to do, per- haps, was to make possible the epic of the Mille of Garibaldi's Thousand. Castellammare, Ferdinand II. On the eastern side of the bay, far from Vesuvius and under the lee of the mountains, Castellammare seems to be perfectly happy in her naughtiness. She has left the tragic Stabiae to sleep under the harvest fields, with Pompeii, keeping herself apart, resting in the delight of the freshest of shelters, she looks toward Author Vomero Author The Plain of Stabiae and Vesuvius from Castellammare Church of San Francesco di Paolo, Naples Alinari Gastellammare THE TWO UBUS, KINGS OF NAPLES 263 the enchanting peninsula made for ever celebrated by Sorrento. When one arrives at Castellammare by the railway from Naples one has the feeling of having reached the end of one's journey; that there can never be any means of going further. The most unlikely railways always have something waiting at the end to carry you on. Here, no, you say: it will never be possible to pierce that rock. But the Sorrento tram- way has succeeded in festooning it just to show that nothing can resist the human will. Well seated, as she is, Castellammare stretches two goodly streets along the seashore, rounds about a pretty little port and stretches itself out in view of the setting sun. A town square or Largo and some gay looking places of refreshment are almost the sole decorations of this charming summer resort. Behind the scene are the usual sordid, crowded streets where live the fishermen and the women who find employment only during the " strang- er's season," the strangers being Neapolitans for the most part in summer and, in much smaller numbers, foreigners during the spring and autumn. Several mechanical industries, however, have been established here in recent years, the poverty of the people being relieved with the industrial prosperity of Naples which is growing day by day and finding that export from the harbour of Castellammare is convenient and inexpen- sive. Half fashionable and half industrial, this little 264 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES place would hardly attract the traveller with but a fortnight for the entire Bay of Naples, if it were not for the royal villa of Quisisana standing above it and dominating the gulf as far as the Cape Circeo. The Bourbons were not the discoverers of Quisisana as Charles II. d' Anjou had a fortress there, but they, at least, discovered its charm as a residence, Charles having appreciated only its military value. It was Ferdinand-Ubu who made a villa of it, assured by its inaccessibility; at Vomero or on Monte Coppola, Fer- dinand was always doubtful about the approaches to his residence. Indeed, one must have a passionate enthusiasm to attempt such a climb. Italy is a good leg de- veloper almost everywhere, but Castellammare and its steeps of Quisisana will make you a rival of the mountain goat. The road is good, shaded with Eng- lish oaks, and treacherous in a thousand windings which deceive you at the end as they should. The villa, formerly royal, now municipal, is the ideal site for a hotel with a lift but nothing less than ah ideal hotel the property, for instance, of that society which has supplied the greatest number of countries with comforts, so that guests would have no annoy- ance to mar their enjoyment of the sublime scenery; the vast woods where Ferdinand and his children fled from the complaints of their people would pro- THE TWO UBUS, KINGS OF NAPLES 265 vide for most delightful walks. At Quisisana visitors should pass only enchanted hours, not of sight-seeing, but of rest and recuperation. How such days would run away from the tourist among these high camellia bushes, under the chestnut trees, beside the torrents, in view of the wide sea, Vesuvius, and all the places surcharged with the souvenirs of the centuries ! When those possible proprietors take possession, no one who knows the place will refuse to subscribe to a funicular railway or some sort of lift or elevator so that one of the most perfect resting-places in Nature's gift will be offered to the overworked and the convalescent ; even the energetic traveller will be able to rest his bones for a night and properly enjoy the thing he has come to see. By muscular means alone, the ascension is no- thing less than terrible, but an intrepid walker finds his reward at the end of his climb in this immense and mag- nificent park with all the chaos and the surprises of mountains; their living waters singing unending songs of their beauty, their strength, and their majesty; and, from the terraces, all the magic spectacle of the Bay of Naples, Caserta Vecchia, Camaldoli, Pozzuoli, Miseno, and the great plain where Pompey battered down the mutilated walls of Capri, Sorrento, Posilipo, Ischia, the gulf of love, littora qua fuerunt castis inimica puel- lis, equally resplendent in all of its many aspects. Seen from one side, here, as if in recompense for the pain 266 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES one has endured in coming, the panorama seems more vast than from any other point, even from distant Capri. At Quisisana, the Bay of Naples lies at your feet, everything in its place; the great plain where Stabiae still sleeps, where Pompeii has come forth, where Vesuvius rises, doing us an incomparable ser- vice for the calculation of distances, where we see Naples, pink as a rose, the mountains through the screen of Caserta, and the comma of Miseno upon which, in the mists and far away, the promontory of Circeo sets its point. The villa, which enjoys these pleasant places of the earth from all its windows, is a great pink house with- out character, not unfittingly so in a site with which architecture would cope in vain. Within, there is no decoration, only rows of rooms strung upon a corridor the hotel already built and its walls covered with coloured papers. . . . Behind it, however, in the midst of the park, is a building in the form of a tower, pierced by narrow windows. Is it a reservoir or decor- ative caprice? Merely a garden house, I am told, where Ferdinand shut up his grandchildren, the sons of his son Francis, when they were naughty. What a sweet prison, but sad, too, and a characteristic of Ferdinand's mania for seclusion. I think of the childhood of those poor little beings living near the most cowardly, the most contemptible of men, under THE TWO UBUS, KINGS OF NAPLES 267 the perpetual terror of an anger which was only the recoil of the ill-humour of the people, over whom that grandfather reigned so badly. It would be pleasant to think of those children playing at La Murata and Caraccioli, during the flight toward Sicily, the second Marie Caroline, our Duchesse de Berry, disguised as Lady Hamilton. Ferdinand II. must have played the part of grandfather, whose name he bore with such scrupulous imitation that one might call him, Ubu II. of the name. Ferdinand II. of the Two Sicilies was even an ex- aggeration of his grandfather, impossible as that may seem. Francis, son of Ubu I. and father of Ubu II. reigned but five years. That lustre sufficed him to show himself worthy of his father. Insolence and debauchery presided at his Court. He was at the mercy of his barber, Viglio, who sold everything. Caropreso, wishing to become minister of finance, ob- tained his portfolio only by paying the hairdresser something like four thousand pounds or twenty thou- sand dollars. As for the Queen, she was the prey of her maids of honour who, also, were business women. Certainly, the outward aspect of things was altogether correct. There was a Constitution, tribunals, com- munal and provincial councils a thorough outfit. But care was taken how it was made use of. In fact, when the laws were inconvenient, orders to stay pro- 268 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES ceedings were sent to the chamber of deliberations, or orders to annul the laws. If a faithful loyalist was subject to the functions of legal operations, the Crown intervened. The police kept in prison those who, by chance, were acquitted and taught them with the whip, to do what was wanted of them . The nobility pillaged the commune and razed forests, standing in with the agents of the State. All titles and all functions were for the highest bidder. Government took no course for the development of the realm ; there was no culture, only imposts, assassinations, and the most profound servitude. As in the whole of Europe, here arose one cry from the conscience of the people, since that of the kings was silent. Ferdinand II. received his heritage, thus taken care of, in 1830. For a moment, a few people had the sim- plicity to place their trust in him. He was a good speaker with an easy manner and his hand held out to the lazzaroni, but he did not keep his kingdom waiting long to learn what he was going to do. Married to a saint, Maria Cristina of Savoy, he beat her. His ten- year-old son was named treasurer of the discounting bank with something near eighty pounds or four hund- red dollars in appointments per month. A monsignor of the Church, Cocla, replaced the paternal barber, a prudish prelate for whom the antique statues were draped and green swaddling bands were put upon the THE TWO UBUS, KINGS OF NAPLES 269 dancers. Women of the street were expelled, but they could buy permission to remain. As to the said Ignace, he was made marshal, and his appointments were drawn by the Jesuit Fathers. Finances were arranged on the simple rule that all surplus was the property of the King. Therefore surplus steadily increased. Never was such an economical regime. Brigandage brigands paying their taxes was under special protection. Poerio goes on to say: "Reac- tion, having become government, was organized into a party, dismounted all the social machinery, took pos- session of all employments, reduced the nation to helotism, brutalized the people by maintaining them in ignorance and fomenting superstition, frightening them by tortures, impoverishing them and exhausting them with extortion. This government, based solely upon brute force, applied with a perversity which nothing moved to compassion, the atrocious principle that superstition and misery are the strongest columns that can support a throne, and it founded its strength upon the oppression of all." Another detail : Naples had the glory of building the first railway in Italy; it was constructed to carry the King from his capital to Portici. Others followed, but it was forbidden to build them with tunnels, because they were immoral. Trains were not allowed to go on Sundays. When they left Naples on Saturdays, they halted on the way 270 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES for travellers and employees to attend mass, vespers, and the benediction, each station being provided with a chapel. Naples, during this time, is described as prostrate under ridicule and infamy; but, as Lamennais so ad- mirably characterized its condition, it slept in "the peace of the cradle, not of the tomb." Indeed, in 1848, Naples set the example for all Italy : she was the first to rise. Ferdinand II. then showed himself the real Ubu II., giving the people all they wanted when they had raised their barricades before his palace, yet placing himself at a window to encourage his troops to fire on the crowd. Shrewdly keeping himself in- formed upon affairs to the north of him, as they grew more complicated in other States of Italy, Ferdinand heard the cannon at Novara. Ah, a Constitution! Have the Neapolitans ever talked of that? They had better not! Away with newspapers! No more schools ! The liberal deputies to the Parliament were imprisoned and exiled, arrested on their way to take their seats, and if the House held any deliberations, all their resolutions were allowed to lie without the royal sanction, as was even the Budget. A catechism was published which left that of 1837 far behind, and that contained this question: "Are all those who wear mustaches and beards liberal philosophers?" Then there were doubts on the subject; now, no, and THE TWO UBUS, KINGS OF NAPLES 271 in the new catechism was said, ' ' The King is not bound to respect his oath to the Constitution, if that is con- trary to the general interest of the State. Who is the judge of that interest? The King." The people found that out. Gladstone, stopping at Naples in his travels, saw it. Two letters, forever famous in history show the world the remorse of one nation, and that England, which had sustained Ubu I. and still re- membered Nelson, the savage executor of Caraccioli. "What we find here," said Gladstone, "is not simple imperfection, nor even occasional corruption or sever- ity, but incessant, systematic and deliberate violation of the law." He estimated the number of political prisoners at fifteen thousand and concluded: the Bourbon regime here is " the negation of God erected into a system of Government." Like the negation of God, also, was Ferdinand II. 's peaceful death in his own bed. That was late enough for him to hear the declaration of the war of Piedmont against Austria, the war which was to finish with the unity of Italy, but too soon, alas, for him to see the realization of a free nation from the Alps to Sicily. What a fine show he would have made at that moment, as magnificent as his grandfather in 1799 and in 1806! The grandson, perhaps, finds his excuse, his defence, or, at least, his explanation in his ancestry; he was but a replica of Ferdinand I., with a little 272 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES more brutality, but, it may be, also, some additional shade of conscience in his actions. What Ubu I. did by instinct, Ubu-Bomba did deliberately, and he did nothing the less on that account. His great political principle declared : " The world asks to be duped, the King should be the first to give it what it wants." He but kept to the axiom of his ancestors; he had seen his grandfather live and reign upon it; Ferdinand II. did not invent the rule of his life, he but applied it, as his inheritance with his kingdom, and applied it with dexterity. His son, Francis II., had been carefully kept out of affairs. He was considered honest, but weak and inexperienced. Honest he was, perhaps, but decidedly he did not remain so. At Naples he had not time to develop his character, but in Rome, where he found refuge under the wing of the Pope who, for the young Neapolitan's sake, compromised himself in the eyes of the entire world. It was from Rome that Ferdinand coolly asked Victor Emmanuel to divide between them the States of the Church, and, then, upon the refusal of the King of Italy, he turned to Garibaldi who had just driven him out of the Two Sicilies. He offered Garibaldi fifty thousand men to fight the Austrians or the Pontifical Army, as the great leader of Italian independence might choose. The i ith of May, 1860, Garibaldi and his thousands THE TWO UBUS, KINGS OF NAPLES 273 had landed at Trapani on the north-western coast of Sicily. August 2Oth, three months later, he crossed the Straits of Messina on the eastern side, Sicily having been conquered. Landing at Melito, on the very toe of the Italian boot, he moved northward. The yth of November Victor Emmanuel made his triumphal entry into Naples, where Garibaldi had been waiting for him for two months. In four months, three of which were passed in Sicily, Garibaldi had conquered the Kingdom of Italy, and it had been child's play to do so. The armies sent out against him threw down their arms at his feet. He had but to appear. The peas- ants believed him the brother of Christ. Francis, flee- ing from Naples, took refuge at Gaeta with so strong an army that Garibaldi had to follow him under pro- tection of the walls of Capua. Francis had some forty thousand men, Garibaldi had twenty thousand. That leader of a band of volunteers, the independent hero so many times disdained by military men, won the victory of a veritable tactician. He was wise enough to send but a part of his men out to fight, in spite of eagerness and panics, until evening ; and when evening fell he launched his fresh troops, his own guard into the fray. The battle of the Volturno is one of the most brilliant pages in military history. After that victory, which annihilated Francis' last hope, Garibaldi might have dictated his conditions IS 274 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES and said: "I will give Naples to the new kingdom the day that Victor Emmanuel is crowned King of Italy at the Capital. But he did not. Made a fool of so many times as he had been by Cavour, he allowed himself to be played with once more, and, after a plebiscite, he went to meet the King who entered Naples by his side. Victor Emmanuel never forgave him for having been acclaimed more than his King. The first request Garibaldi made after abandoning his dictatorship to the King's profit recompense for his men, met with a hard refusal, and Garibaldi, fresh from the conquest of the half of Italy, left for his rock of Caprera with fifty lire (some two pounds, or ten dollars) and some seeds of green beans in his pockets. Would he have succeeded with less difficulties than the monarchy of Savoy encountered in overcoming the evils, the corruption, and the poverty which desolated Southern Italy ? That is doubtful. The sore was old and deep. It is not closed yet, although one may al- most say that it is only the poverty which remains today. Since the Angevins, the realm had been sys- tematically despoiled at the pleasure of its rulers, and can it be less than a question of centuries to raise it to prosperity? The Bourbons of Naples, no doubt, carried the weight of the faults of their ancestors as well as their own. But kings who impose themselves THE TWO UBUS, KINGS OF NAPLES 275 on a country in the name of their ancestors can- not complain of the grievous part of their heritage. Besides, if Ferdinand I. was a bad ruler, had not his descendants still a good example in his father, Charles III. ? Why did not his children follow the road traced out by the first Bourbon instead of overturning his, the most enlightened, government of Europe with the most abject even out-doing the Turks that history has ever registered? Since that, with comparatively short and rare exceptions, was in fact but a variation of the six or eight centuries of her entire history, it is not strange that Naples yet bears traces of her abnegation. Tenth Day THE LOVERS' COAST Salerno and Amalfi. ETWEEN Salerno and Sorrento lies one of the most famous landscapes of Italy, dreamed of as is Venice by lovers and lovers of beauty. I have just been over the first half of it, from Salerno to Amalfi. Who would ever believe that the name of Salerno is attached to hygiene ? This tortu- ous and dirty city was the birthplace of the celebrated School of Salerno, whose sanitary principles should it not have been the first to profit by? The school departed, and the town has never shown the amour- propre of an author. Whatever the reason, Salerno 2-6 THE LOVERS' COAST 277 is not attractive. When I arrived there the rain was falling in torrents, and even the waters from heaven seemed to be sloppy. I had to call upon my courage to climb to the cathedral, which must be known by everyone who wishes to thoroughly understand the art of the Normans. It is said to have been built but a year before Robert Guiscard took Bari and to have been remodelled in 1204 by the children of Guiscard's nephew, Tancred d' Hauteville, the Crusader. At any rate we can see in it all the ingenuity employed by the Normans to conciliate their ideal with the Byzan- tine conceptions which they had been encountering for fifty years at every step of their conquest. At Salerno they were in Lombardian domain, which facili- tated the assimilation, the Lombards also cultivating the Roman art which they reclaimed from the Latin and the Greek. Guiscard and Roger and their suc- cessor were quite at home in this amalgamation. They adopted the atrium of the basilica which they ornamented with columns from Paestum ; they threw up Roman arches above the naves, and borrowed decora- tions from Byzantium. Sicily was soon to undertake the charge of bringing all this under the Oriental in- spiration. It was Sicily who sent here the admirable pulpit to which so many churches of the Campania came for a model, as the churches of the Apulia imi- tated the church of San Nicola of Bari. Some people 278 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES claim, however, that these pulpits came from Rome, from the Cosmati. In fact, it is impossible to see them without thinking of Cosmedin. Perhaps, then, it would be well to look for a common origin in the two work rooms, of the Cosmati and of the Normans of Sicily, for it is not probable that the Cosmati came down here. We must turn toward the East. The Cosmati were inspired from Byzantium by way of the monastery of Monte Cassino, the Normans through the Apulia and Sicily. What a fertile controversy this might raise! But, at least we have the certainty of the incomparable beauty of these decorative mosaics, these palms, these volutes, these plaques, these bands of multicoloured stones, incrusted like enamel. The Cosmati were timid beside the Normans. I give them all the credit of inventors in Rome, even by reason of their very timidity. If they had known the Sicilian or the pure Byzantine art, they would have been bolder. Raise the Roman ambones to their tenth power and you will have the pulpit of Salerno, com- parable to that of the Palatine at Palermo, even richer, perhaps, certainly freer. In the Campania, the Arab in- fluence is less dominating. I believe that one will never find in the Arab art figures so full of simple energy as those of the angel and the eagle, on either side of the arch, as those at the angles and on the capitals. These are the hallmarks of Northern art. Among the THE LOVERS' COAST 279 tints of these mosaics "velvety as Persian carpets," M. fimile Bertaux describes them, these figures have a virility and noble rudeness that the Oriental never knew and which it was reserved to our unserene west- ern skies to evoke. And what an interesting inven- tion is this connecting of the pulpit to the ambon by a bridge, another "Persian carpet." The two pieces thus form a veritable monument of art, one thing, but varied, brilliant, and sober at the same time. In the church, abominably sacked by the Baroque, this Ori- ental pulpit and basilican atrium give us the essential of the architectural dreams of Guiscard and his child- ren, almost barbarians and arriving late in a land saturated with beauty, but who knew so wonderfully how to adapt their instincts to their surroundings. At Vietri begins the radiant cliff-road of which the magnificent cornice roads of Genoa or of Provence can give no idea. This is charming the entire length; the others, more restricted, but with pleasing lines, stretch along portions of coast between promontories from which man has long since driven out all beauty by his pretentions and his advertisements. Nowhere, there, is seen, as here, a continuity of strength and majesty. The road hems the coast, its fotd separating the blue silk of the sea from the festoon of the rocks. One's first impression is his total change of point of view; the scenery has become wholly marine. The 2 8o A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES land is no longer the essential ; the waves have taken its place. They have suddenly become sure and familiar- The feeling of the unknown, that delicious fear which comes from the thought of things with which we are unacquainted, is imparted to us, really, more by the rock than by the sea. A formidable wall, impossible to pierce; the only friendly side to look upon is that of the open where vessels are riding the waves. One is a prisoner, separated from the world by these colossal rocks, these gigantic masses. Looking at them one feels seized by a sort of fright. What is behind them? Land? Useless to think of it. Access to it is impos- sible. Only the sea smiles at you, calls you, invites you to be quick in getting away. You cry, "piu presto" to your driver, you want him to urge his little horse to go faster, and every turning brings you along more walls of the solid rock. Your eye searches them from top to bottom, as far as you can see them, but you find no opening. Sometimes the rampart seems to be cleft ; it is but a fissure of which the road takes advant- age if it can, only to be obliged to return to the original wall. We come to a torrent stopped by a fall that we might climb if we were not so eager to reach the end of this marvellous drive, yet there, on our left, the deep blue of the waters is infinite inaccessible, also. Two days we drive, two days we go on and on the length of this wall without being able to cross it. In compari- THE LOVERS' COAST 281 son, the sea is so beautiful, so attractive, we forget that it has any mystery. Over there is Sicily; that way is France; there is Naples, too, land, liberty which one would buy at the cost of any peril. But the end of this rock is not yet. An impulse seizes me to climb it, to jump from point to point until the endlessness of the pinnacles discourages me. One can go to great heights, at times, even to some four thousand feet from which a fine line drops to the sands washed by the sea. The rock hangs suspended, masses up to the blue sky, threatening one with a crash at every step. After seeing this forbidding mass so long, however, and knowing that it is to be constant company for so many hours to come, one resigns himself and even begins to look at it with curiosity. Chaos is a terrify- ing thing, but it is also magnificent. From the sea, the chaos of this rock must be the unseen detail of imposing masses; nearby, it is frightful, but of a frightfulness that is disarmed by close acquaintance. Immovable, cut by the hand of man, opening to pour out its waters and to shelter villages here and there, known and understood, it loses its rudeness and vio- lence. Details make us forget the mass. One comes to love the rock for itself, for its tranquil majesty, its loins of Titan upon which grow the herbs liked by goats and sheep. In fact from Vetri to Amalfi, it is covered with verdure, with gardens, with orchards 282 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES of lemon trees which, like ourselves, turn constantly toward the sea, ungrateful children of a morose rock that is so kind at heart. Engrossed as I have been with awe, inspired by grandeur, I have not seen the lemon trees on the narrow stages of their continuous terraces; yet how could I have been blind to the golden fruit, expanding, contracting into small compass upon all the declivities of the capes and in the miniature valleys dug out by the torrents? The wall of this garden-clad rock is still more abrupt in its winding passages, but there it is sheltered and I am reminded of what Frederick II. is said to have cried when he landed in Palestine: "If the God of the Jews had known the Campania he would not have made such a fuss over his Promised Land!" I, who have never seen the Promised Land, take pleasure in thinking of it as a country lying under some such rich green mantle as this, studded with gold, rewarding the closest in- spection with its exquisite detail. Perhaps it would have pleased that pagan Frederick better to hear it said that this paradise is draped and kept like a throne where Phcebus might recline in idle pleasures. This vast garden stretches in its beauty from promon- tory to promontory, from valley to valley, always re- freshed by the torrent singing the song of life in its running waters. It is a garden faithfully cared for by many hands, by men and women, also children, who The Ambo in the Cathedral, Ravello View from Hotel Palumbo, Ravello, Showing Maiori and Minori Alinari The Cathedral, Amalfi Alinari View of Amalfi from the Grotto of San Cristoforo THE LOVERS' COAST 283 seek in it not only shade from the brilliant southern sun, but their life, their daily bread. What a pleasant vision of repose in abundance ! Man has Nature, even old Sol in hand. Between this ever-heated rock and the rays of the sun, the fruit would soon be burnt but for the screens interposed by man, and behind which it ripens slowly, filling gradually with beneficent juice, I seem to be passing trellises that will never end, stretching mile after mile along the winding coast defying the hot rock, welcoming the cool sea breeze. From a distance and obliquely, I see the growing lem- ons. Nearby, I cannot find them; they are all hidden behind their green roofs, under which it must be sweet to walk, at twenty, with fingers interlaced. Now and then a few bold lemons show themselves, yellow ro- settes upon the green cloak that covers the shoulders of the precipitous mountains. The hours passed in walking along this uninterrupted garden between the solid rock and the open sea, leave the memory dizzy. Sensations precipitate themselves, swelling sheer, sharp like the mountain, serene like the sea, voluptuous like the vineyards. One would like to be possessed by reveries of all of these three sensations at one time. But let us leave to Nature's self her want of precision and seek the only refuge possible from her disorder of confused immensity, from her wildness, from her beneficence in which we 284 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES lose consciousness of ourselves; that refuge is in the industry of man. The golden nails of the lemons will serve to hold us to our theme, and the villages, hang- ing from the seductive vastness like fruitful trees, will keep us from losing ourselves. Sometimes the houses appear to be in a gorge, gripping the calamitous rock along the torrent which keeps them from parching. Their red roofs, their green windows, and their white walls wave the flag of the Italian Union against the background of the mountains. They are miserable villages, but seem so full of joy, so frank and open to all that is good in the sunlight which is indeed the most festive sight of all on this jagged shore. Only a few days ago I was enjoying the blue sky above the Adri- atic coast, the villages standing out against the sea, and April roses scattering their petals along the walls bathed by the waves. The play of the sun upon the flat beaches of the Apulia has a fineness of tint and shade that one does not see here ; but the lights of the Adriatic lack the vigour of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Often over there along the borders of the Venetian lagoons, as over the low plains of the Tavoliere, of Ban, and even of the Ionian Sea, tender mists soften the glare of day. Here the rock will keep nothing of the rays thrown at it by the sun, but sends them all back multiplied ten- fold from the braziers amassed during unnumbered centuries. The air is wonderfully dry; nothing inter- THE LOVERS' COAST 285 poses itself between the sun and earth. The light has an implacable cruelty; in it not a stone, not a leaf can cheat. You can count the seams in the mountain, the rushes on the shore. Each tile on the roofs is dis- tinguishable from the others. As far as you can look, you see the hamlets forming masses from which every piece may be picked out. Nothing but takes on an un- usual value here; I feel that I might count the drops of the cascade that is falling above my head. Everything seems larger, more important than it is in mere fact. Yet how can I reduce its grandeur to such a compari- son? Besides the gentle lure of the great lake of the Mediterranean, besides the resistance of the walled mountain, besides the pleasant gardens, with the golden fruit , another charm makes itself felt here, differing from that of the mountains in its brutality. They are dis- sembling, they move our emotions, stir the curiosity; we would always like to open them and join the people from whom they so sternly separate us. The glare of the light is crude to us, too; but, instead of repulsing us, it attracts us. Shining upon all alike, penetrating into the most secret corner, into the blackest holes, this light which can be so beneficent has also cruel powers. It spares nothing. It makes everything flare out, enlarge, become colossal. Plants, the sands of the shore, rock, and men, all sparkle, stand out distinctly, even spring forward. One is eaten up by the light, we 286 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES all remember certain summer nights when the moon has been violently bright. The daylight here reminds me of such rare moonlight raised to the hundredth power, spreading its whiteness everywhere, scarcely permitting a shadow; one feels that he is floating in light. It seems to be even under one's feet, to carry one along; one is immersed in a blinding glory which bathes all surroundings as well, in which every atom is dancing in the universe to the rhythm of the ardent bow of the sun. Along the gorge of a torrent deeper than usual, which discovers the mass of the mountains behind the coast wall, a world held border prisoner, runs the road to Ravello. Far as it takes me out of my way, I must go up it until I see that other world which this world I have been travelling elbows for so many miles without ever embracing. I have a great desire to hold in my hand, as it were, these diversities so closely stratified and never amalgamated. Ravello stands some twelve hundred feet high, right away above the sea like a burg above the Rhine. Draped in oaks and chestnuts, it shelters itself in a rock of which, seen from below, it appears to occupy the summit, a fascinating point to be approached but slowly, by circuits follow- ing the course of the torrent with its rubbish and its mills. The spectacle is wild and full of strength; all the gorges are that ; and my eyes still full of light have THE LOVERS' COAST 287 some difficulty in seeing the fresh verdure. But I know that it lines the way to Ravello, once a great city, now nothing more than a belvedere. To this day the glory of Ravello remains attached to the "farmer generals" of the Angevins, the Rufolo family. To them the cathedral owes its pulpit, by no means a rival of that of Salerno, of which indeed, it is but a modest copy, yet exceedingly interesting, especially for its lions with the column handles, the Lombard lions, which Niccola Pisano afterwards adopted for his pulpit at Pisa. They attest here the vitality of the descendants of Desiderius. r On this pulpit are two medallions of Rufolo and his wife and a bust placed above them, some of the rarest and most expressive work of the century when art dropped back into its infancy and fell asleep until the hour it was awakened by Niccola Pisano. Interesting as this pulpit is, I prefer the ambon whose design, although simpler, seems to me the work of a firmer hand, of a surer taste, and whose decoration is the most exquisite of all, first the peacocks and then the whales, each of the latter swallowing a Jonah. For there are two of them and the whale on the left catches his Jonah by the legs. His mouth, too wide 1 Didier, Duke of Tuscany, who became King of the Lombards and was besieged at Pavia by Charlemagne, his father-in-law, and dethroned. See Little Cities of Italy, vol. n., chap. ii. .4 FORTNIGHT IX XAPLES open, his haggard eyes show that the man, with incredibly real Jewish head, will not go down. The monster on the right has seized Jonah by the shoulders and with mouth but moderately open, eyes shining with voluptuous satisfaction and forefins raised frisk- ily. he shows with what ease the man is slipping down with feet together as if he might be interested in his journey. The adventure portrayed is only comic, but the colour is marvellous. Upon the white of the marble, between garlands of mosaics in gold and black and red enamels, the tender sea green of the whales, with rocks all around them, and sand, too, gives an ineffable sensation of delicate colouring. Even if Jonah had not been told that he was to come back, the beautiful coat of his swallower must have reassured him. And the whale on the right is so full of joy, I am sure, because he knows that he is going to puke up Jonah without doing him any harm. Rufolo, too, stuck in the gorge of his master. The King dropped him from favour and confiscated his villa. Like Vaux-le-Vicomte, this house was too beautiful for its Fouquet. Kings are dangerous either as debtors or creditors. When they owe too much or when their stock is not sufficiently "watered," they are tempted to suppress the creditor who carries his account with him. If the banker has the imprudence to love display, excuse will avail him little. Rufolo Alinari Cloister of the One-time Cappuchin Monastery, Amalfi Author La Corniche from. Salerno to Amalfi Amalfi Salerno from the Harbour THE LOVERS' COAST had none. The place of Ravello was and still is a wonder of taste in which it requires little perspicacity to find the Sicilian influence. In a low and closely cropped garden, stands a high square Norman tower, above purely Italian buildings with a patio if it were a convent, we should say a cloister, that is purely Arab. Except La Zisa, one no longer finds around Pa- lermo the old Arab houses, which the Norman kings used to build so lavishly. But I think we can form a fair idea of them here ; with this patio surrounded by two storeys of loggias, the lower one with small double columns surmounted by three pointed arcades; the upper one also with double slender columns, but fin- ishing in palms climbing like branches of grape-vine, interlacing their garlands along the white wall en- crusted with black stone and garnished with knots of stucco. This fine marble lace-work, these light and playful stuccoes around the garden with its depths of shade, have the grace and voluptuousness of the Orient. Rufolo was not a wise man because he wished to enjoy his riches, but he was a man of taste, an artist, more than could be said of his masters, the morose Angevins to whom adventure was always incomprehensible and by whom there was no more of that rapid and easy assimilation of the Normans. From the Rufolo gardens I see the coast, but that is really dominated by the Villa Cembrone. At the end 290 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES of a flowering path, shut in between two low walls decorated with high pedestals and with supple plants that form a trellis there is a terrace rounded like the platform of a lighthouse. The Bay of Salerno is sheer below us. The walls have crumbled, but, no doubt, there are others behind them. From this point of view these serrated verdure-covered moun- tains, now so familiar in their bold design, form a chain altogether pleasant, with none of the old terrors. The warm, forbidding rock is no longer distinguishable, only the green of the plants spread out upon trell- ises. The coast, now become serene to our view, stretches on from promontory to promontory towards Salerno, on towards Calabria. At the foot of Monte Alburno, the sharp frontons of Paestum point heaven- ward from its plain. From time to time bays and inlets push into the mountain, which, from its capes, curves back the waves. The well interwoven garland dotted with golden fruit, winds its way capriciously towards the infinite, the sea caressing and continually refreshing its beautiful border. The villages are but pink spots, rosettes marking the links of the garland. Under the midday sun, the sea sparkles like the sheen on smooth sky-blue satin. Not a wave swells, the silence is perfect. Upon the sands of the bays there is scarcely a fringe of foam. I am standing before one of the most beautiful spectacles of our world. Has THE LOVERS' COAST 291 Nature taxed her resources to bring together here the choicest of her marvels ? The heavy anger of the earth lifts its charge of rock. The sweet restlessness of the sea is never-ceasing movement. Bountiful harvests are ripening. The ardent sun spreads fertility with his kisses. Everything that might be dull or serious else- where here is possessed of some charming caprice and elbows its fellow to find room to flourish in the elastic air. The points of the mountains on which eagles perch spring toward heaven where no one disputes their space, the capes push back the docile waves, which move caressingly up to the unresisting sands. The gardens put forth lavishly and their yellow fruit forces its way through the leaves that would screen it from a fatal excess of the sunshine that, properly tempered, gives it all its luxurious life. What marvel- lous disorder blended by Nature, under the beneficent heat of the day star, into divine harmony ! Ah, how much truth there is in the myth of Phcebus identified with Apollo! The horses of the sun, Eton, Phlegon, Eous, and Pyroeis with fire darting from their nos- trils and striking the chords of the lyre with their hoofs ! There are no violent contrasts, no struggles in it. Apollo, with his music, charms all nature impartially; he makes it fertile and nourishes it. When Nature sighs from lassitude under his kisses, her sighs rise to lose themselves among the curls of Hyperion from 292 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES which they fall back vibrating. Harmony! Its source is here in the kiss eternally placed upon the thousand lips of the earth by the sun Musagetes. At the foot of Ravello, on the very edge of the waves, the white town of Amalfi lies along the shore of her bay and rises in terraces up the wall of the moun- tain. Cramped, hard pressed, calamitous, but bold, even provocative, Amalfi hurls her little streets about in assaults and precipitates them into the sea. It is confusion of palaces and hovels, planted happy-go-luck- ily on the short esplanades wherever they could balance themselves on points of the rock sufficiently large to be levelled off for a foundation or utilized as a wall. This squat village with muscles tense holds her shining body to the exhausted rock, clutching it in constant fright. In former days, she reigned over the sea; there only could she extend herself. In fact the earth threw her down to it, and more recently in a somer- sault gave her a push which precipitated some of the houses upon the beach. Will the earth ruin the little town one day for having loved the sea too well ? What other end would be worthy of her? Tranquilly she awaits the hour without repulsion and without desire. She lives her little decayed life, her port useless beside Naples and Salerno, unable to have such streets as towns must have today, inaccessible, she sees the boats pass on to the ports whose waters can carry them, as THE LOVERS 1 COAST 293 hers cannot, no longer looking for the Genoese, the Pisan, the Saracen barks she once used to repulse after she had pillaged them. Now nothing happens, no passer-by ever stops. Amalfi looks at herself all the day long in the waves, her old head carrying the head- dress of the mined walls that crown her cathedral, a many coloured aigrette, shining and diapered. Nothing shows so well what the Normans acquired in conquering Sicily as the cathedral of Amalfi. Let us call to mind the timid monuments of the Apulia, and those of Salerno and Ravello somewhat more daring, but still restrained, if we wish to appreciate how fearless Amalfi was. She even went too far in her anxiety to show how free she was. On the soil of Sicily the Normans disciplined their strength; at Cefalu, at Monreale and at Palermo they set their finished formulae which are restrained. Here they gave themselves rein and leaped too high. The facade of this church is decorated almost like a coffer; it is frail with lace-work. At the head of sixty steps, the loggia shines with intercrossed marbles, crescents, lozenges, spindle columns, pointed ogees, open-work frontons, and with the terraces of its arcades, the last of which supports a mosaic that the light devours. On the left, is the campanile, topped by a little cupola dominating four half-cupolas on the angles. These cupolas are made by intersecting arches like the apses A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES at Monreale and Celafu, and they are ornamented by varnished brick. Let us count. Gothic, Roman, Byzantine, and Arab, all the expressions of art are here, even to the columns from Paestum so that Greece should be present too. The disorder is complete, yet it is a charming living outburst of grace, happy to be proving that it, also, can be beautiful. Everything sets into something else, nothing is itself alone, yet nothing overpowers its neighbour. As in Nature, everything rests in its own place without confusion. Certainly at the moment when the Normans were building this cathedral they had but recently finished more carefully thought-out works in Sicily, but they never made anything that speaks more clearly than this of a people overjoyed by conquest. Amalfi, so funda- mentally Greek in spite of her destiny, gave to the Nor- mans the mastery over the Tyrrhenian Sea that Bari gave them over the Adriatic; she did not give them the hearts of the conquered. These the Norman tried to win by filling them with wonder, showing them that he had not destroyed, but added to the pre-eminence of glorious Amalfi, since she should remain the richest and the most joyous city of the coast. So, it would be vain for me to seek any remains of the Lombard art here. No doubt they might be traced through Nor- man-Roman influences, but the conqueror wisely avoided any flagrant souvenirs. The cloister is Arab- THE LOVERS' COAST 295 Byzantine. Within the cathedral is a Latin basilica which the Baroque, once more, has disfigured. Pass- ing conquerors of Amalfi, the Lombards were disowned by the Greeks and despised by the Normans. They held their prestige in art here, however, more than in any other place. It is to them that my memory re- verts this evening under the cloister of the convent transformed into an hotel where I am seated, looking at the sea which has gone out like an extinguishedlight, watching the fires of the setting sun die down along the coast and flare up rose colour on the rocky summits far above, while the sails of the fishing boats drop and fold, with the wings of the gulls, for a night of comfort- ing sleep. EleventH Day THE HAPPY ISLE Sorrento and Capri E must go on to Sorrento, looking along the coast for three hours more for the fissure by which we shall pass from the South to the North, from the Bay of Salerno to the Bay of Naples. The sea will open out to us, and if it doesn't, we shall jump into it! Enough of prison, charming as it is! It was not without reason that the legends interpreted or expounded by Homer, peopled all the grottoes of this coast with sirens, even giving them islands of their own, those today called Li Galli. But when the companions of Ulysses and all those other lost men, landed on these shores, were they really held by magic charms? It is much more likely that they could not 296 THE HAPPY ISLE 297 leave this generous bay because their boats had cap- sized and the scaling of the mountain presenting even more difficulties to them than to us. Those who succeeded in rounding Cape Minerva encountered the subtile Parthenope between two waters and crossing her domain, the harmonious bay, they founded the radiant Neapolis. The beautiful sirens were the en- chantments of nature which induce us to forget the past for the pleasure of living among the eternal roses whose garlands are prolonged by Paestum as far as this. You see that I have resumed the serpentine road and am crossing the torrents, piercing the rock by tunnel and gradually climbing toward the summits, while the villages sink below me. There are moments when the road is but a balcony. Sometimes it sets out over the sea like the handle of a pot, if one could liken this vast rock to so small a thing. Then we go on for long distances upon the rock cut and bored in holes longitu- dinally : one could never escape here, and, while wait- ing for the wings that are promised us, we must use our legs if we wish to attain the summits. Even now we seem to soar. Upon the coast which vanished behind us, upon the sea, through the last veil of the rising morning mist the sun throws us a reassuring glance. From our height we see nothing but the sharply pointed majestic angles of the capes, broken by the valleys of torrents ; a succession of vast fish-bones, of 298 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES wrinkled dorsal fins as of crouching creatures, a school of them resting. Or are they the fossil remains of the cows of Geryones that Hercules abandoned when he passed this way after having founded Herculanaeum going to Sicily. On we go. The capes that in the forms of animals were so formidable yesterday, today are all modest, low-spreading, plunging into the sea, and the road behind us which seemed such a dizzy height, looked back upon appears a mere dyke above the beach. The mass of Amalfi reduced to the hollow of a hand is a shining little white patch, as if it had a fresh coat of white-wash every morning. It will soon disappear. Other villages efface themselves be- hind new promontories or lose themselves in the tor- rents, Praiano, Positano; and then I perceive a new character in this fleeting landscape. Owing to my high position, it is not the general lines that are changing; the difference is in the character, the peculiar, I might say personal aspect of the things themselves at the moment that one comes near to them. From Salerno to Amalfi this coast is but a garden; from Amalfi to Cape Minerva it is only rock, so bare and sterile that men have given up all effort to fertilize it leaving Nature to her solitary triumph. After we have passed Positano the rock has not even a smile for us. Grim and nude, as it stands, we may count the bones, seamed and gashed as they are, with in a t Alinari Grotto of Matromania, with Natural Arch, Capri Alinari Villa of Tiberius, Capri THE HAPPY ISLE 299 but the tatter of a thousand coats of limestone strewn over them. This rock reminds me of a fleshless skele- ton from which all forms of life draw away. It is no longer anything but a mass of sunbaked cyclopean stones from which the Galli have detached themselves to seek the moisture of the sea. We must scale the last declivities and reach the high plateau dominat- ing the two bays before we shall see green again, and then it will be the verdure of the oaks which love the wind. For the present, we have only the cliffs, pre- cipitating toward the sea or fleeing from it, rocks climbing one over another to save themselves as fast as possible unless they are going to rejoin the little Galli. Yet are not they festooning the generous bay of Salerno? How full it is of such widely differing surprises, yet retaining its own character with them all. Here, once again, I remember that beauty is in the fundamental line, not in detail, still less in trim- ming. How clearly that lesson is taught me today! These bare capes are constructed exactly like their well-covered brothers, they cut the same design into the yielding sea. Over there men have been able to collect divers results of their ingenuity, but they have in no wise suppressed the construction of the landscape. That is the important part of it all, the construction, the character. Why is Naples so beautiful if not by reason of the very architecture of her mountains and 300 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES her coast? Line, line! The Greeks understood the importance of line, and their temples are sublime for all time because that was their one care. The coast of Positano has kept itself intact in the same spirit. Rugged as it is, it is quite as glorious as that of Amalfi whose nobility industrious men have not been able to diminish. Decidedly we are mounting these rocks to jump into the sea when we reach the end of them. In a zigzag, the road, which has become edged with evergreen oaks, suddenly gives up winding on forever and bolts over the mountain, no longer utilized by man. The crest is soon passed. The horses, who for the past two days seemed to have forgotten how to trot, now carry us along merrily toward the inner and greater bay which might justly pride itself on being without second if Vesuvius were not towering there to remind it that things, like men, are but dust. Yet Castellammare makes us forget Stabiae. High above the sea, Capodi- monte reminds us that one day every desire of our love for Naples may be gratified there. And, here, on the left Capri comes out of the blue waters, blue herself, into the blue of the sky. At our feet lies Sorrento with the flowery name of our dreams, symbol of all that makes life precious ; light air, the perfume of flowers, the shade of groves, the freshness of the sea- shore, the lulling of the waves, the odour of fruit and THE HAPPY ISLE 301 love or its memories. Of a lazy and voluptuous life, Vesuvius is the benefactor. How can one describe the mildness of the air of Sor- rento? With mountains to the east, to the west, and to the south, the town lies sheltered upon a large plateau, a veritable platform, upon a cliff sheer above the sea, a platform which is a great park where grow every sort of tree and all kinds of flowers. On the Bay of Salerno the gardens are terraced; here they spread out wide and level, or somewhat so, thickly grown, stubby, laden with fruit, smothered with roses, lilacs, and hanging wistaria. Above are the moun- tains with swaying palms and nodding oranges. Everywhere abound pomegranates, mulberry trees, tamarinds, myrtles, iris, gladioli, lilies, almond-trees, fig-trees, peach-trees, all that Nature produces that is brilliant, tender, and delicious. And over there, at the end of this abundant plain, this rich green and highly coloured carpet at the foot of the mountains, is the little town and its port, a port for little boats, for fear, no doubt, that it lose its charm if brought in con- tact with big steamers, a town with no other character than that of a seaside resort. Everything here is for repose and ease in living. Do not think, however, that you will discover all of that in a few cursive walks. Sorrento offers nothing to the hurrying tourist. For him she has only walls above which come perfumes to 302 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES make him lose his senses and refreshing shade to tempt him from his program of haste. If one wishes to enjoy Sorrento one must know it for a day and a night at least as a guest in one of the villas of which the passing tourist sees but the rough exterior walls. The entire shore, the entire cliff, in fact, is occupied by hotels and by the villas of Neapolitans. If you do not sleep here and awaken here of a morning, you do not know Sorrento's charm; and who, once know- ing that, would not wish to give himself up to it for ever? Upon the terrace of the hotel where I am stopping I have passed the whole of the day among the flower- beds that transported me into my happiest mood while the sea seemed to sing especially to me. When I raised my eyes in front of me, Naples was spreading out her incomparable bay, pointed in the centre by Pizzofalcone whose ridge is cut by the Castel dell' Ovo. To the left, Posilipo and Miseno hide Baia. On the right is Vesuvius. Round about are the islands; Nisida, Procida, Ischia, and here, beside me, Capri. Looking off again, there away on the receding coast to the north are Cumae, Gasta, the mouths of the River Liris. . . . I watch Naples appear and disappear at the caprice of the mist, and change from rose white to tender vio- let; Posilipo and Miseno dance in the golden dust; THE HAPPY ISLE 303 Ischia and Capri are nothing but black masses, great vessels that have cast anchor. All the flowers of Sorrento redouble their perfume while the wind stirs the palms. The air is soft enough to make one faint, and, from my terrace, I hear the sea at my feet babbling confidences. The song of some Masaniello loses itself in the night, vibrating against the rocks. Among all these enchanted places, Sorrento is the most favoured since every day and every night she enjoys the magnificence in which, coquette that she is, she participates; not only is she the most beautiful "bit" of the masterpiece, but that which has been worked up, perhaps, with the greatest tenderness, as she is the most voluptuous and the most deliciously perfumed. Early in the morning here am I again on the terrace, never tiring of the classic scene across which I now watch the white boat that has left Naples and must take me from Sorrento to Capri. Slowly it glides over the sea, directly toward us, sails wing and wing. Here it is and we have all embarked for the famous isle where, today, Tiberius must cede to Krupp in interest, although, on the other hand Krupp yields nothing to Tiberius. The boat waddles along like a silly beauty out for a promenade. I know that she is going to Capri, but she is mistaken if she thinks we are going on her account, for is not the fame of Capri's pretty 304 --* FORTNIGHT /A* NAPLES women widespread and of long standing? On ap- proaching it, Capri appears like a great bell under which a thousand divers are at work. Doing what? I should like to know that they were discovering, at length, the mystery of the blue waters of Capri whose reflections, remaining never to be forgotten in the eye of memory, glisten there as if completing the charm of the blessed isle, like a girdle, the very cestus of Venus, encircling it. For the last eighty odd years, in fact, ever since it has been discovered, tourists have been justly wonderstruck with the Blue Grotto, toward which the boat is now carrying us. More wonderful than that, however, appears to me, under the blazing sun, the blue transparency of the waters about Capri. The sea is often of this colour, especially along the Mediterranean coasts; that is to say, seen from these shores, spreading out to the horizon. At your feet, it is a deep emerald, usually; but here it is blue to the depths. Lean well over the boat's railing, looking at sea and sky; you will think that you are no longer sailing, but flying through thin blue air. The heavens, reversed, are carrying us along; we are stemming the clouds, not foam. Ah, no, for I can see the rusty coloured rocks, covered with seaweed at the bottom of these clear waters, and sometimes the sand which shows me just how they hold their celestial tints. How, indeed? By what chemical magic? Never Alinari The Blue Grotto, Capri Alinari View of the Faraglioni from the Monastery, Capri Marina Grande, Capri Palace of Bonn' Anna, Naples THE HAPPY ISLE 305 mind that at the moment of such pure enjoyment of ineffable colour; blue, frankly, unquestionably, but all "watered" with clear silver reflections that move through it to infinity. The regular flow of the waves broken into contrary motion by the boat do not spoil the tender, transparent, purified, flicking blue of this water. Can it be the water of the sea, usually so heavy, so majestic, so massive? In becoming clear, it has lost all its heaviness and is light as the water of a brook, trembling at nothing and springing into the air for the mere joy of movement. The weather is calm, yet the waves breathe deeply, ready to rise under the slightest gust of wind, such as would scarcely wrinkle a mountain lake, to frisk before the breeze, turn into vapour and fly away in scattered mist. As we coast the island to reach the Grotto, the flapping and clap- ping of the water increases with wonderful gaiety, laughing and springing up about us until we feel that we are making our way through a vast bed of peri- winkles. We slow up. Several little boats swarm about the foot of our ladder, cockle-shells, dancing like so many madcaps possessed by the mirth of the blue waves that carry them, they seem to have come to invite us to join them in an erratic, waddling sort of tarantella. With a jump, we have left the steamer to dance joy- ously toward the Grotto, too entirely amused over our 306 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES new steps to think of the qualms of Neptune's tribute which such bobbing about would arouse anywhere else but in tripping it lightly over the blue silver of these sea depths. The man at the oars is pulling with all his might straight for the abrupt rock. Have we a hard paper prow to our cockle-shell that will cleave the pasteboard rock as we dash into it? Another stroke of the oars, and an opening appears, an arch upon the surface of the water, filled and hidden by each rising wave of the moving sea. How shall we ever go in by that? Between two waves? The attempt may be the death of us. But no, this is all too blue to be bad. Red is tragic, and I foresee that all our tragedy will be- fall the lady of the red cheeks who has hastily slipped from her seat to the bottom of the boat so that her head may not hit the arch. No, no, blue is not tragic, it is comic, and laughingly we squat down to a sitz bath. The boatman seizes a rope ; a wave raises us, and before the next one comes we are in the Blue Grotto. Who has not seen a picture of it? A large cavern where small men, bathed in blue, are moving blue arms, walking upon blue shores, disdaining their blue boats and the Palinurus, not less blue, who rests upon his blue oars. A trifle more and it would be insupportable, but nature always knows where to stop, how to re- strain the charming from plunging headlong into the insipid. In fact, the Grotto is not large, but just small THE HAPPY ISLE 307 enough to be interesting; it is low and sombre with its vaulting slightly tinted by reflected colour. On the left, a little platform permits not more than ten per- sons at one time to land, and a dozen of our cockle-shell rowboats quite fill the cavity. Besides, it is unique, but merely the phenomena of the waters of Capri repeated in this dark hole with an intensity and fresh- ness hardly to be imagined by the most ardent admirer of their azure of open day. How can one paint or describe the colour of the waters in this sombre cave? If the swelling waves that wash the shores of Capri are blue, what word will suggest the aspect of this tranquil pond? Blue, too, but the word that is apt without is inadequate within. The silver blue of the cestus of Venus is here, but clearer, lighter, as if it had been permeated by a refinement of the purest white smoke, as if an infinite number of threadlike jets of milk had been injected into it, and then it had been clarified until only the delicacy of the tint remains. The oars of the little boats seem to be plunging into an immense trough of molten steel and to come up radiant with thousands of sparks. Do not put out your hand towards them, you will be burnt. Just here a nude boy plunges into the molten mass and swims around our boat. But his form is no longer human, whether fantastic or angelic, for a million spangles glisten like scales upon his limbs. Parthenope must have shel- 3 o8 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES tered herself here and, swimming out, all resplendent, dazzled the pilots she wrecked for her amusement. The boy has disappeared. Coming out of the spark- ling vat, he is clinging to the rocks, and the slapping waves, spurting up even into our boat, seem to be looking for their playfellow. The waves, which fill the passage regularly as they come into the Grotto, keep the water in incessant motion, rising, falling, swirling; it seems to be boiling over a hidden fire, yet, in a corner, it becomes more pale than ever, like milk in a lapis-lazuli dish. The phenomena of the Blue Grotto are interesting, charming, not grand, nothing to transport your soul, but a retreat in fairyland on this real earth. To one who is sensitive to colour, there can be nothing more exquisite than this play of lights; a painter must dream of it all the rest of his life. We have repassed the hole between two waves, and still dancing, hilarious as the sunlit water which the oars are trying to elbow into order, to be slapped for their pains, balancing and swaying, we come up to the white steamer lying in clear outlines upon the azure belt of Venus, said to be one of her joys. What were her sorrows? Capri, chosen by Tiberius for his voluptuosities, alone should be able to tell us, the strong Capri, where the women are so beautiful and where the sons of Livia could love no more. At some hundred yards from the THE HAPPY ISLE 309 port, the white steamer stops again and rowboats carry us this time to the shore. Capri, the isle so vaunted as a place for the sweet do-nothing of rest, is a heavy sphere of massive rock; rising bulkily on the right, a sheer wall, neither decorated by verdure nor relieved by any of the fine lines of nature's architecture. On the left, a similar rock, not so high and with less form, is quite as bare and as regularly gashed with numerous fissures. Between them lies the plateau into which are sunk the town of Capri and its gardens. Over this great, grey, hummocky mass of Apennine limestone roads wind as best they can to the top where Anacapri occupies the summit on the right. Villas and hotels perch there, dominating the Bay of Naples, the shores of the Campania and of Salerno, and the happy people in them breathe an air whose purity, lightness, and freshness have no equal. Do not look there for woods or for shade. If there were any, what would they do but swear at this landscape of the sea, of Vesuvius, and the Neapolitan coast, one of the most magnificent landscapes of the world? The soil is rocky, severe, sterile, producing only bushy plants and ragged trees; it yields nothing to enrich with new perfume the balmy effluvias wafted here across the bays. Let us hasten away from voluptuous Capri so as not to see what she is ; magnificently rude. Her beauty is virile to the last point ; she would be forbid- 3 io ding if her waves were not blue, if her skies were less fair and if men had not garlanded her with flowers. For, on the southern side of the island, looking over the peaceful sea, villa after villa rises or spreads itself, filling all the depression between the two vast head- lands of bare rock. These villas are half-hidden under arbours and pergolas of wistaria and roses, be- hind their hedges of carobs and oleanders. The heights of Anacapri protect them from the west winds of the Atlantic. How could the winters be anything but mild? But the space is limited on this plateau shut in between the two rocky extremities of the island, and the houses seem to be standing there in inextric- able confusion, to be reached by paths more adapted to donkeys than to men. An enchanted country, but of no insipid enchantment, on the contrary, it is an energetic, muscular, one might almost say a sturdy, thickset landscape. There are shores, like that of Sorrento, where one feels entirely possessed by the joys of breathing and seeing. At Capri I have no such sense of abandon, but am filled with courage and a de- sire to work. One might become lyrical here, perhaps; but one would write a poem. What strange inspira- tion might I find in the Villa Krupp, toward which all the Germans, with whom the island has been over- populated for many years, have been wont to make their absurdly pious pilgrimage? I can no more be- THE HA PP Y ISLE 3 1 1 lieve in the legend that hangs over it than do the re- spectful Germans, for I see quite well what the great bronze founder came to seek in his peaceful little middle-class house. He came for repose, a repose in harmony with his murderous soul. When, from his window, he saw, up there, the hard, dry point of Solaro at his feet, the eternally splashed needle of Punta Tragara, when his eyes rested upon the peaks of Fara- glioni, when he passed under the Natural Arch, and when he climbed, as I am doing, the treacherous paths where the stones rolled from under his feet, up to the Villa of Tiberius, in these vertiginous expressions of nature the gun-maker found his dreams of grandeur and power. My pilgrimage is not for the sake of Krupp, but for Tiberius, whose walls, I am sure, Suetonius has covered with calumny. If we were not already mistrustful of the historian from what we learn elsewhere of the childhood, the youth, and the maturity of him whom Augustus called "my good boy," it would suffice to come here. What a fitting retreat for his proud spirit when it wearied of the world and its vain agitations! I gave him a slur, myself, just now. Whom does Suetonius mock but us? On this extreme point of the island, which looks first towards Sorrento and -all the coast of Naples as far as Salerno, on to the mountains of Calabria and back 3 i2 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES again to the point of Gaeta, Tiberius's Roman walls still carry their straight blocks of stone and their vault- ings. Here are pavements yet intact, niches and round halls in the architectural disorder which sur- prised us on the Palatine and under the evergreen oaks of Hadrian's Villa, at Tivoli, but which became famil- iar enough to us before the close of our month in Rome. A church, in the care of an unkempt hermit, crowns the eminence, under the pretence of purifying it, no doubt, an unnecessary expenditure of pious energy. The calcareous rock is dry under our feet and barren but for the sparse tufts of coarse grass. In the im- perial days there must have been here, as upon the other plateau, that of Anacapri, closely clipped quin- cunxes, flower-beds, and low bushes. Round about is the vast majesty of the sea thwarted by the obstacle of the heavy rock of the island; the coast of Sorrento of which we see nothing but the peril; Naples, her white line drawn by fingers that never tremble; Miseno, set like a period over the comma of the Phle- grasan Fields; and above all, dignified Vesuvius, even that looking somewhat measured and kept within bounds by the wide sweep of land and sea about it. Things, as well as humans, have their virtues; this island is gifted with a heroic lassitude, a repose like that of Moses who wished "to sleep the sleep of the earth." In truth, Tiberius here still held his empire THE HAPPY ISLE 313 within his tired hands, but only to feel the immensity of it without carrying the weight. The virtue of the refuge of Capri is that which we seek on every point of earth, upon all seas : solitude whipped by the wind, the joy of finding oneself in infinite space. Heaped-up stone, bare fields, beating waves, the vast cup of the gulf, rugged headlands dropping suddenly or dipping gently to quiet beaches, this is a place for the repose of strong souls, even implacable or ferocious minds, but it is not for the tame, the discouraged. The resigned spirit, not the unheroic coward, will always find con- solation in the imperishable works of serene nature. The soil of Capri has engendered some of the most generously endowed creatures of Italy. Coming down from the heights of Tiberius 's retreat, I stopped at a bottiglieria, literally translated a bottle-place where I was offered the local entertainment of the tarantella. She who danced it with bare feet on the tiles of the rustic bar knew nothing at all about that or any form of dance. Heavy, lacking all grace, with sloppy feet, scarcely able to give a turn to her dirty skirts, burdened with the dust they had collected upon the road, this fallen girl, already showing age above the yoke of her chemise, under the coral beads on her neck, below the wild brush of her hair, nevertheless, was not without an air of nobility. Her tired features, lashed for how many generations by the strong sea-breeze, 3 i 4 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES the tint of her skin baked a hundred times by the re- fining fire of the Southern sun, her eyes, spangled with gold, flaming with the white light of the rocks which shine like mirrors, and her smile, a little self-conscious over her fine teeth, this poor girl, mincing the wiles of the woman who is escaping from the fatal mosquito, from the insidious malaria, still retains in her manner, something of modesty, of dignity that touches me. At first she hopes to please me by a bait she has often seen the tourist rise to, but quick to admit the futility of her awkward lascivious gestures, she seems to drop them gratefully under the reassertion of her instinct- ive modesty. The women of Capri, with their ardent eyes and majestic carriage, have smiles which promise nothing and impose respect. Before them, one feels like a sensitive man looking at a Pompeian bronze soiled with the earth, scarred by rust ; filled with ad- miration that a body so neglected can retain so much beauty. You see them going about the streets in their clothes of many colours, their strong bosoms in gold braided corslet ; straight and severe in their slow movements, they look at you with big eyes that are deep and cold. Never have I understood better than at Capri what was the Roman idea of beauty. In these women I find all the matrons whom I admired at the Vatican and at the Museum of the Thermae. I have seen here a thousand Livias, replicas of Livia, THE HA PP Y ISLE 3 1 5 the mother of Tiberius, but it is in vain that I have looked for the daughter of Augustus, the light Julia. The women of Capri are superb like this proud island, a faithful portrait of it. Capri carries her head high, with brilliant eyes and teeth, straight shoulders, grace- ful arms, broad hips, firm on the feet; and, ravaged as she may be by the blast, she is still unchangeable with her imposing presence among the illustrious Tyrrhenian daughters. Twelfth Day THE HEAVING REGION. OF DAIA BOSOM [With due respect to the British censor, be it submitted that this is but the translation of the classic name for small bay Sinus still in common use, as il seno di Baia. H. G ] Pozzxioli FTER having strolled over the trem- bling earth lying to the east of Naples, we turn to the west where we shall find it burning. From Homer to the most recent poets, who has not sung this land? Pindar, Polybius, Diodorus, Strabo, Pliny, Horace, Virgil, Martian's, and Statius, to mention only the ancients. But to adequately celebrate its grand- eur is a privilege that has been reserved for our own day. He who would do justice to the Phlegraean 316 THE HEAVING REGION. BOSOM OF BAIA 317 Fields must have the souls and the skill of a poet united to the wisdom and knowledge of a scientist. The re- markable writer who the other day initiated us into the mysteries of Herculaneum, Signer Giuseppe de Lorenzo, has written in his Campi Flegrei an excellent treatise on the geology of this region a poem in prose I should have said a glorious hymn to which science has given the breath of inspiration. Nothing, there- fore, but an inspired translation of his work could sug- gest the lyric beauty and the scientific interest of the wonders the author has found here. I can but follow where he leads and, in my traveller's notes, try to re- flect the light shed upon my way by the geologist poet in whose company I have visited the Phlegraean Fields from Naples to Cumae. At Miseno I found another friend, him whom I had with me upon the ruins of Selinunte. * Between these two Neapolitan writers, Giuseppe de Lorenzo and Paolo Savi-Lopez, perhaps I shall be able to write with stronger feeling. At any rate, I am aware of a greater sense of security, since it was under their protecting friendship that I crossed these fields of great beauty and profound scientific and historic interest, so well trodden by their firm feet, so well seen by their penetrating eyes. First of all, however, let us invoke the shade of Petrarch who wrote, when the papacy was in exile at 1 Little Cities of Italy (and Sicily), vol. iii. in preparation. 31 8 A FORTNIGHJ IN NAPLES Avignon, "I have seen the places where Virgil has been and more, which were described by Homer. The aged sage of Greece whom no genius has ever ap- proached, finding no other land worthy of his genius and his poem, lent them to Italy. I have seen the lakes of Avernus and Lucrino, the marshes of Acheron, the Caligulan Way and its superb arches, ruined by the waters now, and the dyke built by Caesar into the sea. I have seen the country inhabited by the Sibyl, the horrible cavern into which the wise never enter and from which the foolish never return. I have seen Monte Falerna of the celebrated vineyards, the arid earth perpetually exhaling a beneficent smoke, vomit- ing cinders and flames with a confused murmur, like a cauldron furnace. I have seen the rocks distilling their healing waters, and the baths provided by nature against all the ills of mankind to the vexation of the doctors of medicine disdained by eager people of both sexes and all ages. I have seen not only the grotto of Naples of which Seneca writes in his letter to Lucius, but also round about, the mountains which have been dug out and recovered with vaulting of marble, shining with brilliant whiteness. The places have not aston- ished me more than the works of men . Already I have less admiration than I once had for Roman walls, Roman towers, Roman palaces, now that Roman solicitude extends so far from the fatherland (if the THE HEA VING REGION. BOSOM OF BAIA 319 right thinking man does not find himself in his father- land wherever he is) that these winter delights have become suburban. In summer one has Tivoli, Fucion, the shady valleys of the Apennines, Lake and Mount Ciminus, what Virgil calls the sunny retreats of Um- bria, the shaded hills of Tusculum, Monte Algido, living springs and limpid rivers For winter we have Antium, Formias, Gasta, Naples. But no place is so mild and so desirable as Baia, witness writers and noble ruins. I know that Baia satisfies human voluptuosity more than it does Roman severity; nevertheless the rigid Marius might be praised as much as Csesar and Pompey, whose customs were more refined, for having, all three of them, chosen this environment, not to lose themselves, but to escape softness of heart, to learn here to despise the noise and confusion of the ports and the voluptuosity of Baia; Scipio Africanus himself could not become resigned to never seeing it again." So Petrarch, having planted a laurel on the tomb of Virgil, sang of his emotion. Our own is not less strong, the emotion of all whose hearts still throb with the Latin blood. But why do these Phlegrasan Fields move me more than other Latin fields ? Why do they take greater hold of me than the plains of Stabiae and Pompeii ? It is because this is our source ; the begin- nings of our human Latin domain spread themselves upon these very surfaces, or such as they were in an- 320 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES cient days. Here Greece took her ease; here Ulysses allowed himself leisure. Think of that! And this was the chosen resting-place of Rome rather than the Neapolitan Orient. The most beautiful of legends and the greatest dramas of history unfolded in the palpitating bosom of Baia; and to them are added the impenetrable mysteries of the world in its perpetual tenure, the life boiling out of the earth which one ad- mires in its grandiose actions and its magnificent fits of anger. Look this way from the heights of Camal- doli and see the harmonious scene of the tormented crust of our planet. Picture to yourself the bay not yet formed, think of Ischia, and Procida linked to Miseno, hill after hill standing in the plains, the lakes still craters and Monte Nuovo, the New Mountain not yet in existence, since it did not arise until the six- teenth century. The Phlegraean Fields is our own image, the symbol of our humanity in continuous formation, aspiring to a new state, breaking up every- thing about it in order to approach nearer to perfec- tion, sowing ruin, but creating life, and both ruin and life, in spite of the sanies discharged, do attain a higher beauty. In the uncertainties of this earth are symbolized all our weaknesses, all our desires, too; our restless instability and our disorganized effort, as well as our sleep, filled with memories of horror and of love. As we look over it from the heights of Carnal- THE HEAVING REGION. BOSOM OF BAIA 321 doli, this little corner of earth seems not to have found its true position yet, as if everything would put itself in order by and by, throw up another mountain, lower an eminence or two, cause a new island to emerge, suppress some city and replace a valley by a pretty bay. Over there to the East, Vesuvius has long been too fixed and terrible for us to touch him; here the earth is living like ourselves, apparently en- joying the passions that make it so turbulent, as .we do ours, with a magnificent and generous fertility; and it is the earth of the Cumaean Sibyl, of Cicero, of Agrippina, of the very essence of our own blood. The myth of St. Januarius must have had birth here; the boiling blood of the martyr is our blood which quickens to prodigious action as it leaps from the body of our prolific mother. Until the time of Murat, Naples had but one road to the Phlegraean Fields, the famous tunnel, pierced in the time of the Romans, under the hill of Posilipo. Murat laid out the Strada Nuova of Posilipo and the Savoy- ard Monarchy dug out the Grotta Nuova, making the tunnel used almost exclusively today. When the tourist is up on the hill where it is believed that Virgil was buried, there is but one way for him to take, the airy one clinging to and winding with the rocks of Posilipo, Murat's road. From here, again, is an en- 322 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES tirely new aspect of the entire bay aspects, I should say, that, under the varying lights, change with every hour of the day. The road mounts the hill between two lines of houses; on the right, the dwellings of the people; on the left, high above the sea, happy and memorable villas. Roman voluptuosity enjoyed dallying upon these hillsides from which it beheld Baia and Naples, Rome, and Greece. There in the Villa Pansilypon Vedius Pollio advertized his gour- mandizing; others hid their love affairs. Queen Joan II. must have been of the latter company, though, indeed, she seems to have given more attention to her amours than to hiding them. There, too, the Viceroy Medina tried to please his wife, Anna Caraffa in the Palace of Bonn' Anna which never was finished. From Santa Maria del Porto, where the Medieval Neapolitan poet Sannazaro reposes, to the extreme point of Gajola, the mountain has remained Posilipo, a modern departure in spelling, but still dedicated to pausis lupes, a truce to sadness, as Pollio put it. Villas crowd one another, precipitating their gardens above the waves, never tiring in their admiration of the bay spread out before them, of the mountains of Sorrento and Capri, smiling tempters in the face of the gravity, and the riches, of the Cumasan shores. To- ward evening, the promenade of Posilipo is enchanting. What can be compared with the experience of going THE HEA VI NG REGION. BOSOM OF BAIA 323 to Pozzuoli by way of the New Grotto so as to lay, at Fuorigrotta, your homage at the feet of the great lyric Italian, Dante's great nephew, Giacomo Leopardi, then to return to Naples by the Posilipo road. Vesu- vius, at the close of day, is indeed the spectacle par excellence, invaded as he is by shadows, the lower part already black, the centre height pink, the summit still brilliant. The sombre zone enlarges, the mauve veil rises slowly until it envelops only the smoke. It is, of course, the hour of extinction; but the changing effects of the fading light are of the tenderness of ecstasy, while the veil of darkness falls, covering the sleeping sea, even overcoming Capri. Naples then shines forth with her little lights gleaming through the tracery of the Villa Nazionale, and Vomero flashes out her brilliant pearls of a royal crown. Posilipo passed, the road winds along with the beach of Bagnoli and at length reaches the tufa walls which form the declivities of the Phlegraean Fields. Not one stone of this soil is not volcanic. This country, like French society other, too? dances over a volcano, over twenty volcanoes. It is nothing but depressions and elevations, craters which have become lakes that have soon dried, mountains that have sprung up sud- denly and disappeared without warning. It looks like ground where excavation is going on. In the early days of the researches in Pompeii, the plain of the Sar- 3 2 4 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES no, with its holes and mounds of thrown-up rubbish, must have appeared a reduced copy of the Phlegrsean Fields. The rock is still almost nude, the humus has not yet had time to form or to germinate. Now and then, we see a few courageous trees making an attempt to grow. Stones of lava, rocks that have been ex- pelled from the bowels of the earth, all is now chaos, awaiting the order which nature always gives at length to complete her work and to which man sometimes lends a helping hand. The earth is trying to set her- self to rights, but is not quite decided how things should go. The soil is unstable, running a little into the sea even now, as if the great internal fire, that is still master here, could not permit it to lie quietly. And what will that fire do next ? Solf atara, which the ancients called the Forum of Vulcan, offers a spectacle both pleasant and severe, nor more one than the other. As you approach it, you exclaim, What peace! Not a sound, not a breath of moving air in this vast basin of which Virgil must have been thinking when he wrote of Avernus having no birds to wrinkle the air with their flight. The depression of this now sleeping volcano is not deep ; it is quite easy to go down into it, and one can still see the vast sky above and have no fear, all is so tranquil. Scattered about are a few puny trees and small blanched thickets upon the slopes, tufts and bunches almost too mean to be called vegetation. THE HEAVING REGION. BOSOM OF BAIA 325 But what silence in such an exquisite lightness of air that one fancies himself enfolded in wings ! Meantime the greenish dust of the road seems to be- come lighter and more inclined to rise in clouds than any other dust ever encountered. I am enveloped in the finest of flying atoms, I walk on clouds of them, I create fresh cloudlets with every step I take. Do you remember, at the theatre, Wotan striking the earth while invoking the subtile Loge? Under the heel of the god, smoke comes out of the earth and rises all about him, capricious and impalpable. The tour- ist of Solfatara might fancy himself become the sad and weak husband of the honest and exigent Frica. His boots provoke fire, and if, not having a lance, he throw a wisp of straw into the pit, all the smokes of the infernal regions rise up about him. Farther on, there are sands that run like water, and one is astonished to see that a shovel plunged into the running mass brings up nothing but a bit of gravel. This beautiful vase of Solfatara with its gentle declivities invites us to some extremely diverting amusements. How many varia- tions of childish magic might be practised here if this peaceful nobility were suited to such enchantments! We will not trust them, but keep our eyes well open, for nothing is more treacherous, more shifting than the mouth of this crater. Where we passed yesterday, we are forbidden to go today. Small reversed cones are 326 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES forming incessantly, the funnels of miniature volcanoes which empty slowly, become exhausted and then form anew. The earth thus working continually up to the very surface is consumed, swells, and where the crust is thinnest, throws off its vapours which must find their way to evaporation. So is the tragic action of nature made apparent by means to which our com- prehension is closed. We walk over pest-tainted flames and see nothing but death round about us. The struggle is here taking place between the rage of hell and the gentleness of earth. So many trees and herbs would like to flourish; but the fire is stronger than they, the sulphur deadly. The vapours, which do no harm to us passers-by, stifle the plants, blacken the rocks and leave a constant deposit of poison. Smilingly as we may come into the crater, we go out with lips tightly shut. It was, however, in 1 198, that Solfatara threw out these rocks lying about. How near to us are these irresistible forces, this unknown power; and who could doubt that hell was here? Although we do not recognize our feelings under the form of the myth of Cyclops, we have the same senti- ments as had the companions of Ulysses and ^neas. We stop before the unfathomable mystery with no greater sensations than theirs. And the implacable and exact knowledge of the savant only adds to our humility. THE HEAVING REGION. BOSOM OF BAIA 327 "At the base of the crater of Solfatara," says Signer Giuseppe di Lorenzo, "the water is almost boiling, whereas the smoke which comes out through the walls attains 130 Centigrade (226 Fahrenheit). To these hot waters and vapours are joined other gases which come from a very deep layer of the earth, causing a luxuriant vegetation which, in its turn, attracts a dense population. This population knows the strength of the subterranean fire which smoulders under its feet and sometimes breaks forth, devastating all around it, but, also, throwing out matter from w r hich life will spring tomorrow. To the eruption of 1 1 98 is due, prob- ably, the trachytic breccia one sees at the south-east of Solfatara, near the little church of Saint Januarius (the Neapolitans' San Gannaro, who was beheaded here, it is said, because the lions of the amphitheatre of Pozzuoli found him too tough to tear to pieces) . Some of the blocks of that rock are several cubic yards thick." If, with the help of the scientist, we were able to measure time, we might appreciate the insignificance of the three centuries and a half that have rolled away since the appearance of Monte Nuovo, by comparing them with the thirty-odd years since the last great eruption of Ischia, the island which is so closely connected with this portion of the yet- forming mainland; then, perhaps, we should under- stand something of the mental aberration that would 328 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES attempt to compute time and embrace the obscure works of the universe. Pozzuoli lies below Solfatara, along the edge of the sea, stretching out the melancholy of its vanished grandeur, resigned to still live upon this changing soil, to change with it, possessed with the sentiment of the immobility of life and holding to one sole memory ; its own former prosperity. In past time, upon the de- clivities of these mountains were the villas of Cicero, of Sylla, of the Emperor Nero also, and the scene of that orgy, the Cena Trimalchionis, rather the villa of Petronius, and there, the legend is, the Elegantiae arbiter wish to die, not, however, without leaving a revengeful picture of his time in the immortal Satyri- con. From the hillside where the burning sun ripens delicious grapes, the Romans looked down upon the constantly moving waters of the harbour as, today, we gaze over the port of Naples from Vomero. Some day, perhaps, Signora Matilde Serao will choose it for a novel in which to expose the corruption of our twen- tieth century. As the Naples of today is gradually becoming an industrial centre of modern Italy, we can appreciate how Pozzuoli was the great commercial centre of the Romans. Probably founded about five hundred years before Christ, by exiles from Samos, fleeing from Polycrates, this town, under the name of Dicasarchia was the prey of the neighbouring colony THE HEAVING REGION. BOSOM OF BAIA 329 of compatriots, Cumae. and about the time of the in- vasion of the Samnites, gave itself to Rome. Cumae, after her conquest, was no longer safe; Pozzuoli, on the contrary, thanks to her harbour, grew and pro- spered. While Miseno was the military port, Pozzuoli was the commercial port, excepting the time of the Punic Wars when this, too, was a military port. All the traffic to and from the Orient was by way of Poz- zuoli. Here, one day, was heard the clamour raised by Cicero in the Roman Forum: "From here, I see all the Pozzuolians, rich and honest merchants, come to attest that their partners, their freedmen who were stolen and put in chains by Verres, have been massacred." It was not until the creation, by Claud- ius, of the port of Ostia, that Pozzuoli fell to second rank. At that time Naples scarcely existed. The supremacy that she was to take, first of all was Poz- zuoli's; and the strange irony of it all was that Naples lost her glory because she wished to remain Greek, and Pozzuoli hers because she became Roman. Poz- zuoli, however, flourished with all the trade of the East during the Republic and the earlier part of the Empire. All "the monsters of the sea" landed here their products and their mentality, the grain and the beauty being carried on to Rome. The rage for pil- lage of the Roman proconsuls and men of letters who tore Greece's masterpieces from her, found its last 330 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES port here. All the marvels of Greek art that fill the museums of Rome and Naples passed through this city. Here, too, landed the Apostle Paul, finding refuge among the Jews, come, like himself, from Syria. Hither Egypt sent her children and her gods. How beautiful Pozzuoli must have been, checkered and moving with many coloured and diversely fashioned costumes, her warehouses bursting with the grain destined for the Roman people, her magazines full of the purple of Tyre for the Roman togas! From the heights of the overlooking hill, Sylla, Cicero, and Petronius contemplated, one the puissance, one the effort, the third the pleasure, in the wealth coming into this shore on its way to Rome. Of those vanished days, Pozzuoli now pointing her empty quays into a useless sea, has nothing but ruins left. One of these is the amphitheatre which, in the eighteenth century was, like the Forum Romanum a pasture, and which, uncovered, today offers us the spectacle of a superb monument. The Colosseum alone surpasses it, although the amphitheatre of Capua has a more interesting substructure. The other great ruin of Pozzuoli is the Temple of Serapis, famous for a learned, controversy into which I do not enter. For a long time it was a temple, but is no longer. Have things, like people, changing moods? The truth is, the qualifications as a temple given to this monument Alinari Pozzuoli from the Bay Alinari The Solfatara, Pozzuoli THE HEAVING REGION. BOSOM OF BAIA 331 were never very solid. At the time of its discovery, in 1750, the early work of excavation, brought to light a statue of Serapis, and that is about all the reason there was to give the name of an Egyptian temple to what the most recent archaeological research can only call a market-place. If I hold any conjectures of my own, I feel restrained to prudence by the shocking example of a German archaeologist who, some twenty years ago, saw in these ruins the remains of an ancient fish-pond. From Serapis to an oyster- park there is abundance of room for the idealists who incline to temples, the materialists fond of markets, and those who wish to indulge in the Socratic irony for the bene- fits of the Pozzuolian oysters of long ago. We who have been thinking of Petronius who came to die at Pozzuoli and there chiselled out his vengeance, we who are obliged today to transfer our Petronius from Poz- zuoli to Naples and, perhaps, to give him up altogether because some clever people declare that he never existed, we to whom is denied, also, the right to see Cicero upon this hill on account of a theatre in the place of his villa, we refuse absolutely to take sides in any question but that of beauty. In the midst of the houses and terraced gardens of the Serapeum is a sort of grand courtyard around which some thirty small constructions are ranged, one of them, higher than the others, being in the form of 332 .4 FORTNIGHT 7.Y .V.4PL5 an apse. In front of that, stand three high solitary columns which might well have been the columns of a peristyle. The centre of the court reminds one of the way a circus-ring is laid off in its debris of columns. capitals, and cornices. Sixteen other, and entire, columns have been carried away to the Castle of Cas- erta where they ornament the chapel. The first impression is that of a public square with its basilica of apse and peristyle, and, in the centre, its commercial building. The place is full of mystery and charm. The constructions along the outer boundary, each with its one window, look with their thirty eyes upon the ra- vages of men which respected their insignificance . The standing columns arouse our curiosity by their mute age and enchant our artistic sense by their dull patina. Must one always weep over ruins ? They are so beau- tiful and they give us so much to dream over ! How insipid the world would be if everything in it remained intact! But it is so difficult for a man to detach his thoughts from himself; everything has reference to his point of view in life, and he loves to find himself in everything. Ruins awaken his ingenuity and his poetic sentiments. Let us not disdain to remain ignor- ant of some things in order to feel them the more, es- pecially when we cannot know them except by means of a science that is brittle in the hands of the best. Let us love ; in that we have the secret of lif e. Beauti- THE HEA VING REGION. BOSOM OF BAIA 333 ful columns, ravaged by time, like these in a desert field of Pozzuoli speak to the heart. I have been thinking here of debris of the Forum Romanum, in similar posture, the recollection is as rich to me as the clearest certainties and the most irrefutable and pre- cise information. We need information as exact as we can get it, how- ever, and for that I turn again to my guide Signer Giuseppe de Lorenzo. He says : "On entering the en- closure of the Serapeum, one sees in the centre of the ancient structure a mass of truncated columns, en- tablature of marble and capitals, all upon the ground among fallen brick walls. Above it rise majestically three great columns of cipolin, their shafts headless and their bases, like all the ruins round about, standing in brackish water which rises and falls with the tide. In fact this water comes from the sea by a narrow canal and mingles with the water of the hot springs that come down from the hill. If you approach the col- umns, you see that they emerge from some six feet of water, lying upon the mosaic pavement of the ancient building. So, the pavement of this Serapeum which, in the time it was built, must have laid a yard or more above sea-level, is today more than a yard below it, as are also the quays of the port of Pozzuoli, Miseno and all the imperial constructions which ex- tend along the coast of the Phlegraean Fields. But 334 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES astonishment does not stop there. On examining the three columns, they are found corroded by the water of the sea. Above and below, they are intact, smooth as ever they were. And, upon looking closely at the corrosion, one will find that it is the piercing of regular holes such as the lithophyte bore in calcareous rock, in fact, in many of the holes are still found the shells of their ancient inhabitants. Similar phenomena of marine erosion have been produced upon the calca- reous columns in the centre of the Serapeum ; of course the granite columns do not have it. From this testi- mony there is no doubt that the great cipolin columns have followed of the movement, both sinking and ris- ing, of this coast; that they sunk in their vertical posi- tion into the sea where the mollusks and the water have gnawed them, and rose, still maintaining their posture, but slightly inclined towards the sea. But why does not the zone of erosion extend over the entire lower part of the columns which have thus stood in the sea-water? The geological studies upon this question permit us to follow the millenary vicissitudes of the Serapeum. "This structure existed already at the beginning of our era, and it was still full of life and of marbles in the second and third centuries, as is proved by the in- scriptions of Septimius and Alexander Severus. The shadows of the Middle Ages enveloped it from that THE HE A VI NG REGION. BOSOM OF BAIA 335 time on, but that it must have begun to sink then is shown by the natural deposits found in it. Owing to its gradual sinking, the sea-water entered the enclo- sure, mingling with the waters of a hot spring. At the bottom of the pond thus formed was made a calcare- ous deposit more than half a yard thick. Then, the eruption of Solfatara, in 1198, filled the temple to the height of about three yards, with a mass of volcanic tufa. This volcanic mass must have cut off commu- nication between the building and the sea and trans- formed the floor of the temple into a tank of the fresh spring water, and that, in turn, covered the volcanic deposits with a fresh-water calcareous deposit, irregu- lar at the bottom, since it covered eruptive deposits, but forming a level surface. But the sinking of the coast went on, re-establishing communication between this abandoned ruin and the sea, which spread another layer of eruptive matter brought up with the tide. Thus it was that at times of great sinking of the soil the columns stood in the sea, even when they already stood some four yards deep in divers layers of deposits, about three yards, then, being subject to the rise and fall of the tide, and some five yards above being un- touched. "This was the state of things toward the year 1500, when the coast began to rise and soon inclined up- wards with the rise of Monte Nuovo, in 1538, and al- 336 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES most the entire beach was raised high and dry. From that time until now, the Serapeum has had the appear- ance of a dry and sandy beach from which emerged high columns of cipolin, smooth above and eaten below. These columns standing in the sand aroused interest in excavation, which was begun in 1749, and which revealed the ancient edifice whose vicissitudes are not yet ended, since, at the beginning of the nine- teenth century, began another sinking of the coast, which is still in progress, carrying the columns of Serapis with it, a half inch to an inch disappearing below the sea-level every year." On the beach, near Pozzuoli, extends today formid- able steel works. Will that and its cannons go down out of sight, or almost so, as did the columns? But what must we think of this land that is never still, sinking and rising continually. It breathes like a woman in repose; its bosom rises and falls with the regularity of the centuries, and what is it but the sinus Baiarum which from the day in which it was first named palpitated under the growth of a world al- ways tender, always dangerous, also; where men dally in ecstasy, lose themselves in luxurious voluptuous- ness, then sink. THirteentH Day TEA AT THE VILLA OF LUCULLUS Baia, Miservo N the eastern side of the Cape of Miseno, back to the sea, face to the bays and to the asperities of the Phlegraean Fields, at the hour when the sun, having burnt out his fierce ardour, but not his clear light, illuminates the magic harbour with his scruti- nizing rays, upon the terrace of a villa, standing upon the hillside among the grapevines, three friends are tasting a memorable wine, golden, like the girls of the Campania, and soft as their speech. After a day in which one of them, a Frenchman, has been initiated by the others, Italians, into the splendours of the Bay of Baia, the three have come to rest under the shelter of 22 337 338 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES these roses and camellias. The French traveller, at the moment, enjoys the deference kindly shown by his companions to the visitor. It is because his heart is quite new to this country whose prestige equals its beauty. It seems to the newcomer that he is more keenly aware of his enjoyment here than his friends. When they come to Paris, the Scholar and the Man of Letters will take their revenge on the Parisian traveller, blase to the riches of his own city. Today the treas- ures of Baia are his. His happiness seems exaggerated, perhaps, try as he may to avoid an insolent expansion. At first, they talk but little, the Traveller allowing his sensations to rise and form their pictures, the Scholar and the Man of Letters careful not to trouble the emo- tion of their guest in this magic villa that the Man of Letters has just opened, since it is his. Gradually, however, under the velvet wine of Miseno, tongues begin to wag. The Traveller, insatiable as he is, plies his friends with questions, and they edify him while plunging him in the most agreeable state of humility. Baia with its surroundings spreads out at their feet and before their eyes. The Traveller begs his two friends to instruct him upon the wonders on which their four eyes had opened as children, and of which Virgil's word pictures had nourished the youth of Italians and Frenchman alike. THE TRAVELLER: Tell me, oh, Paolo, master of Brogi Misenum and the Mare Morto, the Isle of Ischia in the Distance Brogi The Capo Miseno from the Sea TEA AT THE VILLA OF LUCULLUS 339 these vine-stocks, is this wine, worthy of the gods, which you offer me so liberally, this wine, distilled by the rock of Miseno on the slope where your house stands, is it the heroic descendant of that which Lu- cullus used to drink? That makes it still better! And I should like to think that this villa where you are receiving us occupies the very place of that of the conqueror who, though so much occu- pied in meeting his kind, still had time to love good things. THE MAN OF LETTERS : Do not ask so many ques- tions at once, Traveller. I know the impatience of a Frenchman. Yes, this wine comes from the vines that have crowned Cape Miseno for two thousand years. Lucullus drank it, and these slopes were his ; but did he live here ? He owned so many villas ; here, at Pozzuoli, at Naples, everywhere one comes upon property bought by the wealth he amassed in Asia. It is said, however, that on his Miseno estate he probably lived in the villa at Bauli, today Bacoli, which lies on our left, between the Castle of Baia and the port of Miseno. But who knows? With the Romans, a villa did not mean only a house where one lived; a villa was an estate often so difficult of access that it was necessary for the proprietor to maintain a habitation for himself in readiness for his visits. You remember Cicero and his villas. It is what you Frenchmen call your ' ' terres, ' ' 340 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES the Englishman his "estate," the American, also, or his "property." THE TRAVELLER : Thank you for making a fool of me. May it be only this time! So Lucullus culti- vated Miseno? THE MAN OF LETTERS: Undoubtedly, and there is nothing contrary to his having lived here. Was it at Bauli or at Miseno that Tiberius died in the villa bought by Lucullus for two million and a half sesterces ? Excuse me from making the choice, much as I should like to please you. THE TRAVELLER : And, my dear Paolo, was it here, among your own vines, that the bust of Tiberius was found, that one now in the Louvre ? THE MAN OF LETTERS : You are sure that it came from Miseno? THE TRAVELLER: Stendhal, who bought it for four ecus from a contadino, makes the statement, together with another that he had a nose put on it by a sculp- tor in Rome, named Vogelsberg. As a thank offering for kindnesses received from him, Stendhal gave the bust to Count Mold, who gave it to the Louvre. THE MAN OF LETTERS: I trust, then, for my own glory, that that Tiberius was found in my gardens. THE TRAVELLER: You were speaking just now of Bacoli. Is it the village through which we passed on our way here? We crossed a charming little bridge TEA AT THE VILLA OF LUCULLUS 341 shaped like a donkey's back, where I expected our horse would leave us, either by her own personal de- cision or because of a break in the harness. THE SCHOLAR : That bridge spans the passage to the "mare morto," the second port of Miseno. Even the small boats of Ulysses could not lie in it now; but in the time of Augustus and of Pliny, the Roman fleet was easily sheltered there, during the tempests which used to and still agitate the outer port, the harbour at our feet. THE TRAVELLER: Ah, yes, it is clearly seen; the main port is under the shelter of the cape upon which we are seated, and close by, on the side of the gulf, by that point all hollowed out below where the sea pene- trates with galleries which seem to have had their great doors battered in. But, scholarly Peppino, if we think that we know just how much the passage to the "mare morto" has been rilled in, we are less well informed on some other ancient aspects of this gulf we are looking upon. I should like to know wherein it resembles that of the days when the Roman luxury (condemned by Horace in his Fifteenth Ode of the Second Book) covered its shores with bathing resorts and villas. Still more I wonder how it looked when ^Eneas gave the land here the name of his trumpeter whose ashes here sent their smoke to heaven. Now, my lettered host, why do you not dig up your gardens to find the brass urn ? 342 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES THE SCHOLAR: Why do we stop at ^Eneas? Ulys- ses, according to the testimony of Strabo, gave the name of his companion Baio to this land where he came ashore. Hercules himself captured the oxen of Geryon here. But, to answer your question, however far back we go, however near we approach to our own time, we find the Phlegraean Fields in perpetual trans- formation. If we wish to obtain a fair idea of their changes, however, we must not consider them in detail, but in their geological unity. The first time that we come upon this name of Phlegraean is in Pindar, when the poet sings of the combat between the gods and the giants. Aristotle, Polybius, Diodorus give, with reason, the name Phlegraean to all the Campania. Strabo and Pliny, on the contrary, apply it exclusively to the hills between Naples and Cumae. We are less prodigal than the former and more generous than the latter. The hills of the mainland, the outstanding capes, the islands detached from the shore, from Capri and Sorrento, including Naples, Cumae and Gaeta as far as the Cape of Circeo, all is one to science. Draw a cord from Cape Minerva to Cape Circeo; the coast will be its bow, including in its ellipse Ischia, Nisida, Vivara, Procida, and all the small islands. Sea, islands, mountains, all have the same form, the same structure, the same origin. The sea which separates the islands from the mainland and from each other is not deep; TEA AT THE VILLA OF LUCULLUS 343 and its bottom is in perpetual motion, having oscillated about a dozen yards since the days of the Romans. Islands, sea-bottom, and mainland rest upon a large platform which, near Ischia, lies about five hundred meters deep and gradually rises toward the Apennines. The geological excavations prove that the base of those mountains is the same as that of the islands. All the eminences we see are of volcanic formation, conse- quences of conflagrations, explosions, erosions, rocks jumping out of the sea, as one day the cone of Miseno came up. THE TRAVELLER: Long ago? THE SCHOLAR: Do not be alarmed. Aside from the sudden explosions, this ground is changing every day without our perceiving it, and the entire world is changing in the same way, the earth perpetually at work. In infinite space exist infinite worlds which form and die after having lived, that is to say, having developed, but without beginning and without end. Buddha said that two thousand five hundred years ago, and the circle in which men continually go round, enveloped in ignorance, passing from birth to death and from death to birth, moves in the infinity of regeneration. THE TRAVELLER: When, then, did we appear, we natives of Miseno? THE SCHOLAR : Information stops at the fifth cen- 344 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES tury, B. c., with the Etruscan war. If, however, we know how to read Homer, we appreciate that Ulysses must have had the enviable opportunity to be present at a most interesting period of conflagration. THE TRAVELLER: You are speaking seriously? THE SCHOLAR: Nothing of great importance has happened for the last two thousand five hundred years, except the appearance of Monte Nuovo; oh, yes, there were the eruptions of Vesuvius in 79 of our own era, of Solfatara in 1198, and of Ischia in 1302, besides the three outpourings of Ischia in 91, 300, and 474 B. c. THE TRAVELLER: So, aside from normal changes common to the entire earth, this land may be con- sidered as pretty much the same as that so loved by the Greeks and Romans. THE SCHOLAR : They were here so few years ago. THE MAN OF LETTERS: Really, Peppino, you are lacking in the sense of time. THE SCHOLAR : It is you, Paolo, who lack the sense of eternity. We have evidence of a mere yesterday in time in the ruins that lie under the present Bacoli, about the Piscina mirabile and the Cento Camerelle; you have seen it even on the beach. Traveller, in the so-called Tomb of Agrippina and the remains of the Roman port, extending, on the one side, towards Baia, and, on the other, in the direction of Miseno along those porticos which border the Punto di Pennata, TEA AT THE VILLA OF LUCULLUS 345 and forming a little peninsula. This peninsula is a fragment of the crater of Miseno which is the circular port that lies at our feet. It has been pierced below to establish easy communication between it and the gulf, from Bacoli to Miseno. Boats use the passage between the incrustations of acorn-shells which adorn the walls of yellow tufa; they scrape the pavement on which people used to walk, on which, today, curl and beat the waves of the sea. At present the sea has encroached upon the land here; later, the land may encroach upon the sea, for so the life of the world moves. THE TRAVELLER: Kindly stop it at the Romans, those Hellenized Romans of Pompeii, your own an- cestors, I am sure, Peppino. I see you perfectly as the high-priest of Isis, indefatigable gleaner after the har- vest of death for the untiring regeneration of the uni- verse. And tell me how this gulf lay spread out before your eyes in the time when you were brought to the Pompeiian shores by the vessel of Isis ? THE SCHOLAR: It was not until after the Punic Wars that the Romans took any notice of Baia. It seems that they were attracted to it by the healthful- ness of the sulphurous waters, of which there are so many springs in this region. You saw, as you were coming here, the Baths of Nero, as are called these caverns in the rocks above the road between Lucrino 346 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES and Baia. In the seventeenth century they were still in use. Pozzuoli and Baia were popular bathing re- sorts. People who came here had much to say about the beauty of these cities on their return to Rome. The coast was sown with villas at the time of the civil war, the first of them being built for Licinius Crassus and Caius Marius, the vanquisher of the Cimbri. Pozzuoli remained particularly a city of bathing es- tablishments when the western side of the bay became the resort for rest and pleasure. Particularly were there two groups of habitations, those upon the heights and those by and even over the sea, according to the testimony of Horace : " Sepukri Immemor, struis domos; Marisque Baits obstrepentis urges Summovere littora." Caesar and Pompey had houses on the hill, as Seneca tells us: nothing prevents us from placing their villas above the so-called Nero's Baths, the baths being part of their property. Baths were important matters to our ancestors, and this soil was too rich in mineral springs for them to fail to profit by them ; and here they had, quite at home, their mineral and their sea baths. THE TRAVELLER: The Romans never knew how fortunate they were not to have to decide, every sum- mer, between Aix or Trouville! THE MAN OF LETTERS : It would be rather venture- some to tell you exactly where those villas stood. We know that Antony chose Miseno, that Cicero resided TEA AT THE VILLA OF LUCULLUS 347 between Lucrino and Avemus, over there where Monte Nuovo stands; and that Hortensius and Pom- pey were at Bauli, Crassus and Piso at Baia. Where precisely? Fix that for yourself. Look out on the smooth bosom of this round bit of sea, so sparkling and so gentle, let your eye follow the girdle of its shore, and people it with houses much as today the banks of Lake Leman. . . . THE TRAVELLER : You are hard on Baia. THE MAN OF LETTERS : After the Civil Wars, most of these villas became imperial property. The court was brought here. Nero gave to these shores their greatest splendour. His palace rose upon the point you see separating Bacoli from Baia, where today stands the Palace of the Viceroys ; and, just as he would unite Avernus with the Tiber, Nero wished to unite Miseno with Avernus by a colonnade running along the beach. It was there that Hadrian died. THE TRAVELLER: Excuse me, but I am thinking less of those emperors than of Coelius and of Clodia, that young son of good family and the widow of aristo- cratic birth floating upon these waters among the small boats filled with musicians. And Catullus, upon the shore, rhymed his verses to Lesbia with all the satisfaction and the freedom which usually char- acterizes the happiest one of the three. But Clodia was she Lesbia? 348 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES THE MAN OF LETTERS: Probably. THE SCHOLAR : Anyway, Fiammetta certainly was the daughter of Robert, King of Naples. Boccaccio, sent to Naples by his father to learn the ways of com- merce, met, at San Lorenzo, the Princess Maria whom he immortalized under the name of Fiammetta. And it was to Baia they came to find shelter for their love. THE MAN OF LETTERS: Baia continued through the centuries the mission confided to her by the little god of love who, so says a Greek epigram, while bath- ing one day in the waters of Baia, let fall his torch; and since that time they inflame any one who plunges into them. THE SCHOLAR : Read the letters of Seneca of which we have already spoken, Martialis, Juvenal, Proper- tius. . . . THE MAN OF LETTERS : And Virgil, O Peppino, who tells us that Marcellus died here, in Caesar's villa? THE SCHOLAR: Yes, Paolo; I am encroaching upon your domain of letters ! Excuse me . All the art and all the lust that infiltrated into the Roman Empire from the Greek and Asiatic world flourished intensely at Baia, around the harbour embowered in roses and upon whose waves rode the boats filled with gallant compan- ies. Think that the tanks of Hirrius furnished, at one time, six hundred muraena for the triumphal banquet of Caesar; the muraena still famous at Naples where TEA AT THE VILLA OF LUCULLUS 349 their delicate, milky flesh, covered with a strange skin that looks like marble and seems like a souvenir of their ancient glory, is still the ornament and delicacy of any feast. You remember how celebrated were the fish-ponds of the Flaviani who gave their name to the muraena and gave them on the end of their fingers to their guests to eat, according to the testimony of Pliny and Martialis. THE TRAVELLER: Was it not Martialis who said: "She who comes to Baia Penelope, leaves it Helen"? And what was that imprecation of Seneca to Lucilius : "Baia, the rendezvous of the vices, where debauch allows itself every satisfaction, where fast living is so general that licence seems but the tribute due the place!" THE MAN OF LETTERS : Let us not exaggerate any further the excesses of the poets and philosophers. The satirists and the moralists rather abuse us in the matter of the voluptuosity of the Romans. Although the world moves, man does not change. He is neither better, nor worse, than formerly. The proof that Penelope could very well keep her faith at Baia is in the fact that Pliny lived there with his sister. THE TRAVELLER: Where was Pliny's villa? THE MAN OF LETTERS: We may guess. THE TRAVELLER: That is exciting. . . . THE SCHOLAR : We do not even know by what way 350 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES Pliny the Younger escaped from Pompeii the day of the raining ashes. He speaks of the country where the crowd became lost in the night. That could only be on the waste land behind the lagoon of Licola; and that was a long way off. THE TRAVELLER: Well, then, Peppino, tell me what is that great ruin, rather, those great ruins seen at Baia, round in form, vaulted, in fact, in every re- spect resembling the Minerva Medica in Rome. THE SCHOLAR : The one rising near the sea is called the Temple of Venus; the other, above the railway station, the Temple of Diana. Half of the superb masses sustaining the vaulting in the Temple of Diana still exist, as you have seen, whereas in the Temple of Venus, they have been replaced by wild fig trees. It is probable that these constructions were part of the hot spring baths. You know, the entire hill beneath the houses and the vineyards is full of ancient sub- structures. The ruins extend as far as under the Span- ish Castle and quite into the sea. And think how the extraction of the pozzolana (for making cement) has modified the aspect before us. Have you noticed that important quarry at the very foot of the chateau? THE TRAVELLER: Do not think that a traveller cannot reconstruct for himself a landscape which men have stolen from him? Difficult as it has been, I have been able to suppress that Monte Nuovo, for instance, TEA AT THE VILLA OF LUCULLUS 351 that I see above Lake Lucrino, and, with a similar force of imagination, I have rebuilt these shores with their line of villas, rounded out that colonnade along the beach, and I am now crowning the hills with all the chalets. . . . THE MAN OF LETTERS: Chalet is going it a little rapidly. But if you wish to be in ancient Baia, you must rearrange it. A watering place was Baia of old, nothing more. THE TRAVELLER : Is there precise knowledge of the construction of the Romans' seaside houses? THE MAN OF LETTERS: Pompeii might guide us; but Pompeii was a city. There must have been more individual fantasy at Baia. There was more space, also, and the waters themselves were taken into con- sideration. Cicero is still our most important guide. He built his house in the midst of the domain he bought here in the year 56 B.C. He wrote to Quintus that his architect had a genius full of originality, and the villa had its fantastic surprises. Pliny, in his time, praised the grove, and there was a gallery for strolling either in the sunshine or in the shade, like the Pcecile of Hadrian's villa, no doubt. As for the pas- times here, I refer you to one of your compatriots Traveller, M. Charles Dubois, whose Pouzzoles antique you will find worth reading. Cicero took refuge here after the death of Caesar and here received Oc- 352 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES tavius who came to reap the heritage of his father. At length, Cicero left here for the last lap in his life's race, when, fleeing from Rome, he did not know where to hide from the vengeance of the Triumvirs. We see him at Arpinum, at Tusculum, at Pompeii, at Nisida, where he is on the point of embarking, with Brutus, who had found refuge on that island, in the villa of Lucullus. But it was too hard to tear himself away for ever from a place so charming. Cicero was senti- mental, and that cost him everything. He returned to Rome, re-entered the struggle, composed the Philip- pics, and ran away again, to fall at Formiae. THE TRAVELLER : Does nothing of his villa remain ? THE SCHOLAR: You must look for it under Monte Nuovo, for it stood there. At the same time, you might find the tomb of Hadrian; he was buried in Cicero's garden, which had become a public park. THE TRAVELLER. Do we not know how these houses were built ? THE MAN OF LETTERS : Pliny the Younger has left us a precious document in his description of the villa at Laurentum, where stands today Tor Paterno, near Ostia. As Laurentum was a seaside city, it probably resembled those of this region. You remember the long description. . . . THE TRAVELLER: Often obscure. THE MAN OF LETTERS: That is because it was not TEA AT THE VILLA OF LUCULLUS 353 written for us. There was the portico rounded out in the form of a D upon the front, covered with a roof and enclosed in glass. . . . THE TRAVELLER: Our veranda. THE MAN OF LETTERS : A wing on one side was the dining-room extending toward the sea and looking upon it, with many windows and doors. On the other side the principal features were the main doorway and the atrium. We can easily picture to ourselves, here as well as anywhere, the Roman house with the atrium, the peristylium, the portico in the form of a D, the triclinium at the end of the peristylium, and the inextricable confusion of rooms of all forms and all sizes for every hour of the day and night and for every function. Then, there were hot baths, cold baths, tennis-court, and the garden, the work of an architect, like the house, and containing another building for those who did not care to live too near the waves. We may be sure that the refinement of arrangement, of decoration, and of furnishing was great, and that not even the richest men of our day would ever dare to build a Laurentum villa. THE TRAVELLER : It is not a question of daring, but of being able . The suppression of slavery has been fatal to the comfort of certain folk. How fertile is the bosom of Baia in all sorts of souvenirs and all philosophies! THE MAN OF LETTERS : That is because it was, at 23 354 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES one moment, the centre of the world. Wait a moment, is it not that point there, on our left, don't you see the phantom where Nero caused to be opened the vessel which brought Agrippina? These tranquil and brilliant waters have beaten against the villas of emperors and carried their crimes. THE SCHOLAR: As for myself, I always see riding here Pompey's galley, the one that Shakespeare shows us in Antony and Cleopatra, anchored under Miseno for the feast to which are invited Caesar, Antony, Lepidus, Agrippa, Mecaenas, Enobarbus, Menas, and other captains, that feast of the six hundred murasna. While Antony, to the amusement of the others, teases Lepidus, already drunk, by describing to him the crocodiles of the Nile, Menas draws Pompey apart, and, pointing to his guests, tells him with what ease he might become lord of all the world by the simple act of cutting the cables that hold the vessel to her anchors and drifting away from shore; once at sea, nothing would be necessary but to massacre the Triumvirs. And Pompey, who was always paralyzed by a certain honesty, exclaimed: "Ah, this thou should'st have done And not have spoke on't. In me 'tis villany: In thee it had been good service. Thou must know, TEA AT THE VILLA OF LUCULLUS 355 "Pis not my profit that does lead mine honour; Mine honour it. Repent that e'er thy tongue Hath so betray'd thine act ; being done unknown, I should have found it afterwards well done; But must condemn it now. Desist and drink." The banquet continued upon the waters of Miseno, and the guests, without leaving the ship, went directly on toward their bloody destiny, Caesar toward the mastery of the world and the brilliant flash of the Roman Empire. THE MAN OF LETTERS: Never forget, Traveller, that from the Cape of Miseno you see all Rome in her virtue as well as in her vices. This bay was the Roman sea par excellence, Pozzuoli being the commer- cial waters, Miseno the military port, and Baia the fashionable resort. THE TRAVELLER : Let us drink, then, as did Menas. And afterwards, let us pay our respects to the Arm- strong steel works on the shore below where are made the marine monsters upon which modern Italy bases her prestige. The world turns on itself, Peppino, since here, under Miseno, the great Latin fleet has gathered once again. The three friends drank another draught of the memorable wine, and, after the exchange of necessary 356 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES words, each fell into the dream common to them all. Three sons of Rome of one accord. Evening ap- proached and the bay, lighted obliquely by the sun setting behind the heights, gradually was enveloped in green shadow. The Castle of Baia looked at its image in the depths of the waters below it, like Nero searching for the body of Agrippina. The Temple of Venus waved her wild fig trees still bathed in sunlight. The Baths of Nero yawned in the evening freshness. Against the cumulus clouds was outlined Monte Nuovo where Cicero's memory sleeps. The beach of Poz- zuoli draws out its yellow ribbon and all its ruins and hovels shine brilliantly. On the right Nisida and Posillipo hide radiant Naples, but Vesuvius stands wrapped in her rose colour scarfs. There was not a detail of it all that the three friends did not enjoy to- gether. Cicero and Caesar joining their hands, united their lives, minds, and hearts. Castle of Baia Brogi The Capo Miseno with the Mare Morto on One Side and the Bay of Baia on the Other Sommer Lake Fusaro Author The Acropolis of Cumae FoxirteentK Day WITH THE SIBYL Cximae, LaKe .Averrvus AN you tell me, Peppino, you who are a professor of geography, on which bank of the Styx, left or right, were situate the Infernal Regions?" Peppino was silent. He, who knows everything of the configuration of the earth, is speech- less before the abyss. He has scrutinized them, how- ever, for no one knows so well as he the Phlegraean strata ; but he has sounded them with the plummet only. He has never learned where Charon's ferryboat was moored. And he answered my question with another: "Where is your black dog and where are your sterile heifers?" 357 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES I am unable to reply and confess that I had not thought of supplying myself with the victims that might win the favour of Proserpine when we went to find the golden branch in the forest of Avernus. Peppino is my Sibyl, and I have done none of the things he has advised me to do in view of the under- taking that carries us today towards the heights of Cumae and the depths of Avernus. " You need not feel too much regret over your negli- gence," Peppino resumed; "for, at this season of the year, the openings to the Infernal Regions are full of brambles. If we should go in, it would only be to come out in rags as beggarly as were those of Antis- thenes." "And we are enemies of all affectation." So we play lightly to hold in check the eagerness which makes me restless with the slow steps of our horse. We have left the train at Baia, Signor Giu- seppe de Lorenzo, poet of the Campi Flegrei, and I, and are slowly ascending the hill behind the Temple of Diana, on the summit of which the pick, in making the road, has crumbled substructures laid here by the Romans. The earth is full of Roman remains in this region, and in that toward which we are driving, Cumae, are innumerable traces of the Greeks. That is why I am going there : to find the source. The hill crossed, we descend towards the Lake of WITH THE SIBYL 359 Fusaro, a lagoon at the foot of the mountains, closed, on the sea side, by a grove of pines. The white road hugs the side of the pineta and borders, upon the right, the slopes covered with vineyards, and then it crosses the waste land which separates the lake from the rock of Cumae, following on in the desert to and around the Licola lagoon, that, also, bordered by a pineta. Be- tween the two lagoons and the two pine groves, the Acropolis of Cumae rises above the sea in the midst of this long and narrow beach barred by pines where the King's boars fatten undisturbed. We have left our carriage by the roadside to strike up across the vine- yards. It is the first time in the immediate neighbour- .hood of Naples that I have had the feeling of the happy Campania which Frederick II. rated so high above the Promised Land as he found it. We see all its fertility as we cross these fields: first of all, the grapevines, still short but the poles set up to hold them, show us how tall they will grow in a short time. We are in a forest of sticks eight to nine yards high. Do you remember the army of lancers in the old engravings of Mark Antony and his hosts ? We are marching in their ranks. In the autumn, bunches of grapes hang from the top to the bottom of these giants' thyrsi. They will be in reach of the passing hand, which dis- dains to steal a fruit so abundant and full of confidence. Upon the very highroad the branches hold out their 3 6o A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES golden grapes from the brilliant hedges under whose shadow the wayfarer rests from the burning sun. This is not all: between every two of the vine stocks, grow other two and sometimes three harvests. Today the silvered leaf of the bean-vine or the pale green of the pea weave their garlands between the tall poles of the pioppi. x In a few weeks the beans will be gathered and potatoes will be planted in their places, and, if the season is early, yet other vegetables or fruit will succeed them. You can believe it when you see how rich and thick and heavy is this warm red earth. It has been made by centuries of flames, not without suffering, but it now has its reward. Gradually, however, we leave the fields below us and climb up the rock in the midst of a wild vegetation that is yet more luxurious than that, under cultivation. At every step our path runs into bushes which even Moses could not have penetrated. All the bindweed and brambles of creation seem to wish to prevent our passing on as if we were bringing progress and good fortune to this obstinate and benighted region. We 1 The slender poplar tree which the Italians pollard into a round top of open branches, often like a huge basket, upon which the young wood of each new growth of the grapevine (cut back after every vintage usually to within one long shoot and two short ones "three eyes" of the stock) spreads out to catch the sun, branches ; being carried in festoons from one tree to another. H. G. WITH THE SIB YL 361 turn the left flank of the rock and upon our right, stones are heaped up in a mound, mingled from time to time with the remains of ancient walls made, with- out cement, of long flat stones, dishevelled with wild bushes, broom, and cactus which wave like plumes. We were making one of our frequent detours, when my guide halted before a sort of hole in a quarry, half covered with sand and around which wayward branches form a pleasing frame. The hole seems to go down into the earth ; it is lost in blackness, and we see nothing but the cuts, always the same in this country of the Greeks, in the shape of long slices. Between this, grotto of the Sibyl and the Catacombs of Naples and the Latomie of Syracuse, the only differ- ence is in the size of things. But let us think of the reality of this place before which we stand as stood Virgil in his day; let us remember that this cave was then rustling with a thousand wonders and with an entire history ; that the Roman poet saw it such as it had long been and such as it has remained for us. Per- haps the Temple of Apollo was still in existence, but the wings of Daedalus were not. Agrigente had long before conquered the right to possess them. And the old Sibyl was already in her last sleep. " Here, Peppino, you can realize the sense of time. ' Leaning over the web of life, the Sibyl of Cumae, on the vaulting of the Sistine, shows a face ravaged by the 362 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES wrinkles of time, which are the fissures in the earth it- self. She is absorbed still, with all her thoughts and all her cares, in the immense suffering of life of which her great neighbour, the Sibyl of Delphi, is now almost free, she whose eyes are as radiant as two suns, reflect- ing the shining light of Apollo.' This excellent lyric poetry is yours, Peppino ; it is from you who, young, like the Delphic prophetess, still brood untiringly, like her Cumaean sister, over the immense suffering of life and the fissures in the earth." "You know that the cult of prophecy was not exer- cised at Cumae alone. Demeter was honoured, also, and, above all, Olympian Zeus whose bust you saw at the Naples Museum. The entire Greek life, not a magic art alone, throbbed at Cumae. Virgil was a little mistaken in his view of the antique Cumae to- ward which we must continue to climb, if you would like to go there." If I would like to! We labour up the rock, and the stones growing sharper and sharper tell me that we are nearing the summit. At length we are here. A broad platform of rock with no other vegetation than a few weeds, such is the Acropolis of Cumae. The re- cent excavations have not changed its purely natural aspect. Upon the left lie the peninsula of the moun- tains of Salvatichi and Procida, Procida itself, Ischia, and, farther on, behind the others, Capri and the WITH THE SIBYL 363 heights of Sorrento, in fact all the bay to which we seem to be attached by the thread of the pineta of Fusano. To the right, we see nothing but the disap- pearing of the dunes of Licola as far as the mouths of the River Volturno, and, far, far away, the rock of Gaeta, the cape of Monte Circeo, too. Behind us, on the undulating lower land once lay the city of Cumae in the shelter of her citadel, between that and what is now called Monte Grillo (Cricket Mountain), nourish- ing the Greek civilization with which Rome was to become intoxicated, throwing at Cumae Virgil's in- sult: Sic vos non vobis mellificatis, apes! No one who has in him the Greco-Latin heart can look upon this landscape without a thrill in every fibre of his being. The emotion that I felt in the Roman Forum moves me again here, purified, coming from greater distance, but with no intermediary. To all who continue to be interested in Tarquin and the Sibylline books, this rock will always be sacred. It is blessed among all and before all to those who follow up the outpourings of the Greek stream over Europe even to its source. "Is it really on this rock, Peppino, that the first Greeks who landed in Italy took refuge ? I admit that I should like to think that Ulysses, following the ex- ample of ^Eneas and leaving some of his Trojans at Segesta, had landed five or six of his Achaeans on the Cumaean shore." 364 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES "Do not ask Science to confirm your dreams, Trav- eller. You are always saying : Poetry first. To me Poetry is born of Science. It was only after I had done all that I could do to make sure against error that I allowed myself to dally with the Sibyls. Great as is my desire to indulge our common tenderness for Poet- ry, I am conscience bound to make some distinctions. Yes, the Hellenes came to land in Italy on the shore of this bay a thousand years before Jesus Christ. Some landed at Capri and Sorrento, others at Ischia and at Cumse. They were reunited in the bosom of Par- thenope who united the sister races and mingled them with the autochthonic races of the Osci and the Etrus- cans. Of all the Greek colonies, sown in a crown around this maternal bay, to whom we Latins owe all the beauty which has enchanted our lives, Cumse is the most ancient. It constituted, however, but a second- ary stage in the progress of its settlers, for the Chalcid- ians first landed at Ischia. But, at that epoch, Ischia, although quite formed, too often trembled with the fires that had thrown it up from the bed of the sea to be considered a satisfactory refuge by men who were in search of peace. They saw the mainland quiet, covered with virgin fields, while the rock on which we are seated was favourable for a citadel. So they crossed the water between them and this, founded Cumae, and, lance in their grasp, like the Alinari The Castle of Alfonso of Aragon, Ischia Alinari The Arco Felice, on the Way to Cumae WITH THE SIBYL 365 Doryphorus of Polycletes, they won the surrounding land." "This Acropolis is, then, that of the Greeks?" "You know very well that the world never stops, least of all here. Yet one may say that the aspect of this rock does not differ now from that which it had in the epoch of the Chalcidians. The world changes, but slowly. This rock is but the last remains of an extinct volcano, a volcano which has finished its vomitings; its trachyte lava and its black lava, scoria, pumice, its lava gravel and cinders which today conglomerated into grey tufa lie spread over the first layers of lava on the western side of us, while on the eastern side, they have become incorporated into the characteristic yellow lava of the Phlegrasan Fields which, as we have seen, forms the cave of the Sibyl. All this eruptive matter of the ancient volcano has been nibbled and levelled by the atmospheric agents and by the waters of the sea in such a way that a thousand years before Christ it was reduced to what we see today. On the other hand, when the Greeks landed at Cumae they did not see the lagoons which afterwards received the names of Elysium and of Acheron and which are called the Mare Morto, Fusaro, Licola, Patria. In their day the level of the sea was eighteen to twenty feet below the present level. The downward slope of the ground was then more gradual ; the waters of the land ran more 366 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES easily to the sea. The lowered coast, imprisoned be- tween the dunes and the marshes, is rich in fish and shell-fish, fertile in mosquitoes and malaria. In the time of the Greeks the goddess Fever did not reign upon the beach which lies at our feet and which, cov- ered with woods and bushes, was but a part of the Phlegrasan Fields." "How could a maritime people manage their com- merce on this long coast without sheltering port or breakwater?" "They had no choice, since the remainder of the shore was occupied. That gives you an opportunity to admire the power of geography! The earth rules her colonists, and the Chalcidian sailors became Cu- maean fanners, quite like the aborigines who lived still, at that epoch, in their caves between Cumae and Avernus and from which they issued only at the set- ting of the sun. These beast-men knew the future and foretold events. It is said that they had the Sibylline books which Augustus made arise from their ashes, as Horace tells us. The Greeks received them and trans- mitted them, and with them, their own books and the legends that they had brought with them from Chalcis, thus mingling the Asiatic metaphysics with the Euro- pean, all spouting together from the bosom of the earth, mingled with the subterranean gases, moles, rats, serpents, and all the animals consecrated to Apollo Grotto of the Sibyl, Lake Avernus Somr Lake Avernus Author 368 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES Baia, still gave Cumas a certain military importance. It declined, however, and, in 1205, the Neapolitans made of it a desert." It is, indeed, a desert. Nothing lies around us but waste land, dunes, pine trees, and marsh. We have come down from the rock to the beach whereon Ulysses and ^Eneas ran into their prows Ulysses and ^Eneas representing the civilizing races of these shores. In the sand and among the bushes, we walk around the rock which rises sheer to the summit, untakable still. The house of the King's gamekeeper alone peoples these solitudes. If anything of Cumas remains, it is underground, ruins made all the deeper by the sinking of the shore. Under the shadow of the rock, we regain the fields covered with grapevines, seeking in vain something that may remind us of the time, fortunate for us, when Greece set some of her vines agrowing here. There is nothing, and there is everything : all the memories, all the emotions; and all the treasures of human intelligence ! Back in our carriage, we are now making our way up towards the Arco Felice which was cut through the mountain for the Via Domiziana, called, under the Republic, Via Littoranea, the road which unites Pozzuoli to Cumas and to Rome. As a matter of fact, the present road is not precisely over that of the Ro- mans up to the southern face of the arch. We see it WITH THE SIBYL 369 on our left, descending rapidly in the bed of a torrent in the fields where we lose it for a time, finding it again in front of the Arco Felice. As I look at this gigantic, not to say magnificent work, I am reminded that there remains to us only the most solid of all the works done by the Romans. It seems impossible to think that the hands that were strong enough to build this could have done any finer work, yet they were capable of delicacy. We find here, too, in some of the smallest details, the signature of majesty. For instance, the height of this tunnel might have been economized ; it is sixty-three feet high by eighteen wide, a proportional height that gives it nobility and vigour. Note, also, the interior lining of brick. It is difficult to say just what it is one sees of the strong, rude trowel that laid these squares of terra cotta in the manner in which they are arranged, one over the other, in an or- der that is both scattered and logical. The pavement which we tread is the ancient one, washed by the cen- turies, yet retaining its physiognomy of things massive without being gross; strong, but not heavy. Every- thing that came out of those Roman fingers was colos- sal with a noble aspect. That was racial, from the general attitude, seen in a gesture, heard in a tone. How light this Arco Felice is, as light as I remember now to have seen it from the heights of Cumae. It looked like a window in a dismantled castle, and I 370 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES admired its slim grace from the top of the white road, under the weight of the rock, though it was as light as it appeared above the fields where Cumas, at the base of her Acropolis, still lies buried; above the undulations of the Phlegrasan hills, and, upon its other face, above one of the most beautiful, perhaps the most suggestive, of all the Neapolitan landscapes. In the distance are all the hills of Naples and Sor- rento, the mauve hump of Miseno, the hills of Baia, the girdle whose illuminated points pierce the blue of heaven, rising from the tender, sparkling azure of the sea. Nearer by, on the left, stands Monte Nuovo, im- portunate, breaking into the harmony ; one sees that the shores of the lake grow gentler as they mount to- ward Solfatara ! Springing up in the sixteenth century, all that Monte Nuovo has done is to swallow up the villa of Cicero. Not quite all : it has broken the line, too, hiding Pozzuoli which so admirably finished the landscape. Monte Gauro, a bit farther away, on the contrary, balanced Miseno with grace and strength. And over on the right, the curve of the precipitous declivity still, but rarely, yields root-hold to Virgil's mephitic woods. Was it in their depths that was hidden the golden oar that must be found to obtain entrance to the Infernal Regions? It is vain for us, as it was for ^neas, to enter the struggle with the powers of Ceres. There is no longer a Proserpine to WITH THE SIBYL 371 wheedle. Ever since I rowed unpunished upon the Ciane Brook, I no longer believe in Pluto, and the golden oar of the Styx may remain inaccessible for all of me. What should I do with it anyway? The In- fernal Regions can offer nothing that is worth it ; the ponds of Cocytus, Cocyti stagna, surely are not worth Avernus. Have you never thought of the sadness of the Infernal shores, reflecting no ray of the sun ? But they are not so. Round as a bowl, at the bottom of its circle of hill-slopes, covered with grapevines and trees, Avernus attracts to itself a splendour without equal from Helios the Victorious. Here it is at my feet, lying in its shell, its green tint in contrast to the blue of the sea that is so far and yet so near. Little wrinkles upon its face show its age beside the foaming youth of Amphitrite. It makes itself low and small and smoothly level so that we may see in it all our tender feelings. And how we love it! Around it has grown an entire mythology which contributes to the formation of a race spirit of which we are proud to be the sons. To us it is the old paternal idol. We no longer believe in it and we always reverence it. Per- haps it wins much of this admiration from its appear- ance alone; so near the sea, in the midst of its hillsides, animated by the cultivated vines, studded by happy- looking villas, outlined by so firm and strong a pencil, this picture could not fail to attract our reverent ad- 372 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES miration. In the midst of the aridity of the Phlegraean summits, high above the luxuriance of the Campania, it seems to be the spring where the vine stock takes its life for the miraculous wine, that of Horace and of Propertius. Hidden and modest, it has the beauty of things sure of themselves : the f ruitfulness and the un- failing smile. The Latin centuries have drunk of its waters; it has never missed them. Nothing can ex- haust it, its hidden springs replenish it incessantly, and these sources will gush forth pure for us, too, if we will but touch our own hearts with the wand in our hands by birthright. On the bank of Lucrino, a pond today separated from the sea by a dyke, reduced to the appearance of a mere basin in a park by the eruption of Monte Nuovo, on Lucrinc's bank we finished our day with a bottle of Falerna. His task of guide completed, my friend Peppino gave himself up to familiarity with this landscape which he has made his own. To keep us company, we call up memories of our friend Paolo, travelling, at this moment, toward his chair at Catania. We try to sum up as best we can what we learned dur- ing the days passed at Pozzuoli, at Baia, and at Cumas, and I drag the scholar from his geological interests to make him talk poetry about the end of worlds and our annihilation in the universe. "It is an eloquent tribute, Peppino, that your WITH THE SIBYL 373 studies have led you to the tenderness that you have for the sage Caicus. After having examined the bowels of the earth, having come to the knowledge that all things are moving and without end, you have reached that serenity over everything enjoyed by our Renan. But, in order to know what you wished to know of the works below our crust of soil, you did not spell serenity as inaction. You are the true sage who accomplishes his mission without demanding of it a recompense, or even an ending. Your motto is : Let us work. The strength which goes out from us will make of our efforts such use as they require, since they are allied to the general organism no less than the plants, and we know no more than they to what our flowering will lead. Caicus, who knew all, because he wished to know nothing, was not less filled with the virtue of knowledge. Let us live like the plants and like Buddha. Let us flower and be good. Yet, grant one last favour to your friend, the traveller. Like the boy of Baia of whom Pliny speaks, I should like to go to your school every day. To shorten his way, that pupil mounted on the back of a dolphin of Lake Lucrino, which he had stocked with dolphins, and which carried him across the bay to Pozzuoli. You, who have stocked all these places, call the dolphin, and upon his poetic back, let us gather up all the progress that you will agree to as far as the shores of Parthenope." 374 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES "Alas, my friend, there are no more dolphins! Monte Nuovo crushed them all, together with Cicero, Hadrian, and all the legends. Nothing of all that lives now but in us who must do our best to keep alive the memory of the great and the good, until that dis- tant day when human things will have disappeared for the general welfare and the inexhaustible generation of the universe." Fifteenth Day THE POISON CASE "Vesuvius THOUGHT, for a moment, to give a touch of originality to my visit to Naples, by not making the ascent of Vesuvius. But, if I did that, I ought to have left out Pompeii, because, out of every hundred visitors to Naples, at least fifty come chiefly for these two phenomena. They have nothing in common, however; for it is probable that it was not the volcano that we call Vesuvius, but its twin, Monte 375 37 6 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES Somma, that covered Pompeii. When that eruption took place, Somma and Vesuvius were not as distinctly separated as they have since become and the cone of eruption lay to the east of the present one that is, probably, where Somma is now. The present crater has been formed but lately, speaking geologically. So, those, of whom I am one, who have leaned over this mouth to the Infernal Regions, cannot even have the satisfaction of knowing that from there issued the lava that chokedHerculaneum. Sad, but probably true! And the trip is so tiring! Even the indefatigable President De Drosses complained of it, although it is to be remembered that he could not accomplish his duty as we can ours. Pleased he was, however, that it was accomplished, if only for the reason that he need no longer listen to descriptions of how others had achieved the feat. "Yes," he would say with an air, "I've been up; now, for 'heaven's sake, let us talk of something else." While the cable railway saves me all zeal in the ascent, I have leisure to recall with what comic force the good President describes his ascension. "There is nothing but heaps of stone blocks, of iron, sulphur, alum, glass, bitumen, nitre, terra cotta, copper, moulded or fused in a foamy manner in the form of pyrites or dross. . . . There is nothing so hideous to see as these masses of iron sponge, as hard as they are rough. You cannot imagine anything more dis- Eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 1906 THE POISON CASE 377 gusting than these infamous ejections, and one walks over them with inconceivable fatigue. All these mis- shapen balls of dross roll incessantly under the feet and make you, thanks to the detestable rapidity of the earth, descend two fathoms when you believe that you are making a step upwards. We had with us worse luck a troop of peasants who left their vine- yards all along the cultivated portion of the hillside to follow us. They all wore hooded cloaks and called themselves ciceroni, armed with ropes, straps, thongs, in which they enveloped themselves and us, too. Each one of us found himself seized, in spite of all resistance, by four of these rascals, dragging us by the four members, trying to separate the tourists from one another under pretext of guiding us up to the crater; while others, in giving us a push behind, made us go face first on the ground. . . . Oh, you dog of the mountain, apanage of the devil, breath of Lucifer, you did well to abuse me all that you could when you had the opportunity! I may come back to Naples a thou- sand times, but you will never have another chance at me ; and rather than see again your infected whirlpool, I would rather " Become a booby, a cabbage-head, be-fooled, a churl, And that Mr. Satan come and break my neck! " 1 "Devenir cruche, chou, lanterne, loup garou, Et que Monsieur Satan m'y vlnt rompre le cou! " 378 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES Although I had no such accidents as those that befell the President, I must confess that I returned from the ascent in a state of mind much resembling his. What does one see on Vesuvius ? Nothing. That is nothing that one does not see elsewhere or in other ways. One sees vineyards, chestnut trees, then lava, the thousand varieties of volcanic dross, and, at length, the crater, an enormous cavity having "the form of a drinking glass," in which the masses of smoke, taking you by the throat, prevent you from entering. Certainly, it is moving to see a monster that can vomit up death every day, that did it yesterday, that will do it tomorrow. But, upon reflection, we appreciate that it is these effects, not their source, which are palpitating, and I should have given up, and willingly, all thought of coming up here today, if I had not been solemnly promised that tomorrow the volcano would be in a state of eruption. In my youth, I was told, at a fair, that there was to be an exhibition of "the offspring of a carp and a rabbit." The crowd rushed to see it, and the showman announced that while waiting for the wonder to attain the state of health which would permit it to be exhibited, he would show the parents. It is only the father that I see in Vesuvius. How magnificent he is from a distance ! From the Neapoli- tan Marina, among other points of view, at sunset; or, at any hour of the day, from the Royal Palace, from THE POISON CASE 379 which he seems to spread out his great sovereign's mantle, its precious stones lighted by every sort of fire ! Vesuvius is one of the wonders that it is better not to a proach if one would like to keep all one's respect for it. From afar it must always be enigmatic and ter- rible. Nearby it is a poor and dirty mountain whose details make one forget what it is that gives it its beauty, which is its incomparable form, and its gran- deur, which is its terrible doings. And yet, with De Brosses, I ask myself, " Can I wish today that I had not taken the trouble? That is a consideration that the traveller should never lose sight of; it would even be well to make it a general maxim or an obligatory precept." Vesuvius served me for a farewell, at least. From its summit, my gaze em- braced this prodigious bay on whose shores I have just been living some wonderful days. Here I could tell off the stages of all I had experienced, round off their periods in my memory. Standing, as the mountain does, in the centre of the bay, it is its culminating point, gathering about it all the waters, the heights, the plains, and all the cultivated land surrounding it. The "prodigious oven," as Misson says, heats all living things of this place, engenders and nourishes them. If men may lay ruins to its account, they also owe to it prosperity that has no equal. Chimney of Hell, it gives testimony to the terrestrial activity by 3 8o A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES which the vineyards are enriched. Enthroned like a king, Vesuvius presides over his entire domain. At his feet lies the belt of white villages, from San Gio- vanni to Torre Annunziata. Upon his knees are Ottajano, Sant' Anastasia, San Giuseppe. Then, Naples is on his right hand and Castellammare on his left, in the curves of the beaches that he consents to leave open. Beyond Naples extend the Phlegraean Fields and beyond Castellammare rise the mountains of Sorrento, like sentinels of his vast possessions. Capri seems but a part of Cape Minerva; and, for the first time at Naples, I see the open sea, while behind me, on the land side, in the distance, the Apennines are pushed up by the plains of Sarno, of Nola, and of Capua. Standing here quietly upon the summit, I no longer see Vesuvius. Mounted upon his throne beside him, I find him only kindly, paternal, and I forget all the fables that make him out so terrible. From the time of the siren Parthenope, whom Ulysses disdained, to this day there has always been the genius of the place, fruitful and generous, sometimes a bit of a grumbler, always provident, although his actions have been known to upset the routine of life and plans for the future of limited man. From the height of these rocks, I can look over all the ways that I have so recently trod around their flanks, and I think of all their stages, from the coming Auth or Ascending Mt. Vesuvius Alinari The Summit of Mt. Vesuvius as Seen from the Observatory 382 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES merely allowing me to see the splendour of her forms that some faults of taste in the drapery do not hide, and I promise myself to be less unjust the following day. But it is all forgotten before the Baroque abominations. Yet I should like to be credited with the good intention to be fair. All extremes justify themselves in this multiple Naples, as one thinks of the Greeks or of the Bourbons, of Ribera or of Domeni- chino, of the Via del Tribunali or of the Marina. They form the charm of the city, these perpetual op- positions which keep you jumping between curses of disgust and transports of delight. Naples has always been reputed as the city of love, and is it not because of these moving contrasts? The pleasure that she gives makes one forget the bitterness she roused the moment before, until some new outrage effaces that, to be outweighed, in turn, by a fresh delight. And, in the end, as with love, the tender emotion is always uppermost in our memories. Yes, when the whole account is balanced, Naples carries us off our feet. In her own bosom she bears the maximum of beauty, and, then, she has her mu- seum of the arts. Have I, perhaps, already given too much importance to that ? There is a certain pride in our artistic ecstasies ; at bottom, it is ourselves whom we admire through Michelangelo. At Naples, one finds oneself more disinterested, simpler, nearer to the inac- THE POISON CASE 383 cessible gods. The beauty of nature makes of us less feverish captives than the arts, since nature is always more detached from our human weaknesses; and at Naples the sovereign beauty is nature. In the first chapter I have spoken of what constitutes it : perfec- tion itself; grace and strength, charm in majesty. Naples is complete, finished. Those to whom natural wonders are more interesting than those of any other sort find everything brought together here with their greatest effect. That is what impels me, at the end of the reckoning, to worry over some of my severities. I would not give them up for anything in the world but, before the magnanimous bay, I am disposed to ask to be excused for them. They really do not matter. With all her blemishes, Naples is absolutely beautiful; and if you do not concede that she has any faults, I, too, am as ready to admire them as her good qualities. If you will leave me the faculty of distinguishing with my reason, I will consent to embrace all with my love. Like Galileo, I will admit that the earth does not move, since I can affirm that it does. Besides, why not accept everything when one has been not only to Vomero and Camaldoli, but, and especially, from the Pompeian plain to the Phlegraean Fields? The sav- ages were able to attack Naples, but they were not able to steal her crown. 384 A FORTNIGHT IN NAPLES The wonders that she has gathered about her fully justify her in whatever she is. But they are not Naples, you say. Yes, they are, I contend, because they all have in her their centre. The Siren is not at Castellammare, nor at Miseno, but at Parthenope. Were Pozzuoli extinct, Naples would still be resplend- ent. If my friend Peppino were here, he would show me the admirable shelter against the north wind that the Siren has chosen : once more geography triumphs over statecraft. This still burning earth was made to attract men, and her most comfortably warm corner must triumph over every other part. All the bar- barous avidities, to which the anger of Vesuvius some- times lends aid, coalesced as they might be, have gained nothing of lasting power over Naples. She has grown greater continually in spite of the men snatched away from her. For that, too, we love her wholly, even in her repulsiveness. Whoever has seen her once will desire to see her again and always again. Greek Cumae has passed on to Naples, Roman Baia has found refuge here. Therefore she has all perfec- tions, all sentiments, as she has all the prodigies of nature. Naples is whole; the entire world might see itself in her masterpieces as in her sanies, in her defects as in her splendours. As I am thinking of the most charming ornaments of Naples, why does the pharmacy of the Hospice of THE POISON CASE 385 Incurables come to my mind? I see the great hall lined with carved woodwork and divided off like the stalls of the monastery choir, a sort of library of historic tablets, tall headpieces, covered with chub- cheeked angels, with foliage, with columns and ara- besques. And, upon the rays immense glories of bronze that carry the iridescent bottles wherein sleep the poisons are an army of vases in the porcelain of the Marches, yellow and blue, red and green, all alike, in a miraculous gamut of joy and radiance. Human infirmity leads to these shining vases: like Naples. She may have pains and sores; she has the remedies also. Her brilliancy brings forgetfulness of her sad- ness, and the iridescent flasks carried by her rays of glory faithfully keep their salutary poisons, to at least perfume and soften her incurable sufferings. THE END as Little Cities of Italy By Andre Maurel Translated by Helen Gerard Author of " The Story of the Thirteen Colonies " 2 vols. Sold Separately. Beautifully Illustrated. Each $2.50 net. By mail, $2.70 First Series. With 32 Illustrations Florence San Gimignano Monte OH veto Pisa Lucca Prato Pistoia Arezzo Lecco Bergamo Brescia Verona Vicenza Padua Mantua Arqua Second Series. With 4O Illustrations Milan Pa via Piacenza Parma Modena Bologna Ferrara Ravenna Pesaro Rimini Urbino Perugia Ass>si Spello Montefalco Spoleto Orvieto Viterbo, etc. M. Maurel has wandered from town to town, painting in vivid colors his impressions of their historic and artis- tic aspects, showing with keen insight how closely allied are these, what each owes to the other, and how indebted is the present to both. To the lover of Italy the book will afford fresh delight, and to those whose Italy consists only of Venice, Florence, Rome, and Naples these little sketches will open new and charming fields of interest. Q. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK LONDON A MONTH IN ROME By ANDRE MAUREL Readers of M. Maurel's earlier vol- umes, the Little Cities of Italy, will recall with delight how they were led from town to town under the guidance of a cicerone who with consummate skill pre- sented a novel blend of history, art, and description. In this new volume the reader is afforded the opportunity to wander through Rome, viewing, through M. Maurel's eyes, a Rome that, to those who have seen it with the assistance only of a guide book, will have gained a fascinatingly changed aspect. The vol- ume is very fully illustrated from photo- graphs and also contains ground plans of great interest and help to the reader. G. P. Putnam's Sons New York London WORKS ON ART AND THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE By BERNHARD BERENSON The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance With an essay on their genius and a full list of their works in British and Continental galleries. Frontispiece. Third Edition, revised and enlarged. 12. Gilt top. 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