John Inglesant: A Romance (Volume 2 of 2)

by J. H. Shorthouse

  *CHAPTER XIV.*

  When Inglesant had passed the Pontine Marshes, and had come into theflowery and wooded country about Mola, where the traveller begins torejoice and to delight his eyes, he found this beautiful land littleless oppressive than the dreary marshes he had left. The vineyardscovered the slopes, and hung their festoons on every side. The citronand jasmin and orange bloomed around him; and in the cooler and moreshady walks flowers yet covered the ground, in spite of the heat. Thesober tints of the oaks and beeches contrasted with the brilliant orangegroves and vineyards, and, with the palms and aloes, offered thatvariety which usually charms the traveller; and the distant sea, calmand blue, with the long headlands covered with battlements and gayvillas, with plantations and terraces, carried the eye onward into thedim unknown distance, with what is usually a sense of delightful desire.

  But as Inglesant rode along, an overpowering sense of oppression andheaviness hung over this beautiful land. The heat was intense; no rainnor dew had fallen for many weeks. The ground in most places was scoredand hard, and the leaves were withered. The brooks were nearly dry, andthe plantations near the roads were white with dust. An overpoweringperfume, sickly and penetrating, filled the air, and seemed to choke thebreath; a deadly stillness pervaded the land; and scarcely a human form,either of wayfarer or peasant, was to be seen.

  At the small towns near to Naples every form of life was silent andinert. Inglesant was received without difficulty, as he was goingtowards Naples; but he was regarded with wonder, and remonstrated withas courting certain death. He halted at Aversa, and waited till themid-day heat was passed. Here, at last, there seemed some littleactivity and life. A sort of market even appeared to be held, andInglesant asked the host what it meant.

  "When the plague first began in Naples, signore," he said, "a market wasestablished here to supply the city with bread, fresh meat, and otherprovisions. Officers appointed by the city came out hither, andconveyed it back. But, as the plague became more deadly, most of thosethus sent out never returned to the city, in spite of the penalties towhich such conduct exposed them. Since the plague spread into thecountry places, the peasants have mostly ceased to bring their produce;but what little is brought you see here, and one of the magistrates isgenerally obliged to come out from Naples to receive it."

  "Is the city suffering from famine, then?" asked Inglesant.

  "The city is like hell itself, Signore il Cavaliere," replied the host."They tell me that he who looks upon it will never be able to sleeppeacefully again. They lie heaped together in the streets, the dyingand the dead. The hospitals are choked with dead bodies, so that nonedare go in. They are blowing up masses of houses, so as to bury thebodies under the ruins with lime and water and earth. Twenty thousandpersons have died in a single day. Those who have been induced to touchthe dead to cart them away never live more than two days."

  "The religious, and the physicians, and the magistrates, then, remain attheir posts?" said Inglesant.

  The host shrugged his shoulders.

  "There is not more to be said of one class than another," he said;"there are cowards in all. Many of the physicians fled; but, on theother hand, two strange physicians came forward of their own accord, andoffered to be shut up in the Sancta Casa Hospital. They never came outalive. Many of the religious fled; but the Capuchins and the Jesuits,they say, are all dead. Most of the Franciscan Friars are dead, and allthe great Carmelites. They run to all houses that are most infected,and to those streets that are the most thronged with putrefied bodies,and into those hospitals where the plague is hottest; and confess thesick and attend them to their last gasp; and receive their poisonousbreath as though it were the scent of a rose."

  "But is no attempt made to bury the dead?"

  "They are letting out the galley slaves by a hundred at a time," repliedthe host; "they offer freedom and a pension for life to the survivors,but none do survive. Fathers and mothers desert their own children;children their parents; nay, they throw them out into the streets todie. What would you have?"

  The host paused, and looked at Inglesant curiously, as he sat drinkingsome wine.

  "Have you a lady-love in Naples, signore?" he said at last; "or are youheir to a rich man, and wish to save his gold?"

  "I am leaving wife and child," replied Inglesant, bitterly, "to seek aman whom I hate, whom I shall never find under the heaps of dead. Youhad better say at once that I am mad. That is nearest to the truth."

  The host looked at him compassionately, and left the room.

  In the cool of the evening Inglesant rode through the desertedvineyards, and approached the barriers. On the way he met some fewfoot-passengers, pale and emaciated, trudging doggedly onwards. Theywere leaving death behind them, but they saw nothing but misery anddeath elsewhere. They took no notice of Inglesant as they passed. Manyof them, exhausted and smitten with the disease, sank down and died bythe wayside. When he arrived at the barriers, he found them deserted,and no guard whatever kept. He left his horse at a little osteriawithout the gate, which also seemed deserted. There was hay in thestable, and the animal might shift for himself if so inclined.Inglesant left him loose. As he entered the city, and passed throughthe Largo into the Strada Toledo, the sight that met his eyes was onenever to be forgotten.

  The streets were full of people,--more so, indeed, than is usual even inNaples; for business was at a stand, the houses were full of infection,and a terrible restlessness drove every one here and there. The statelyrows of houses and palaces, and the lofty churches, looked down on achanging, fleeting, restless crowd,--unoccupied, speaking little,walking hither and thither with no aim, every few minutes turning backand retracing their steps. Every quarter of an hour or thereabouts aconfused procession of priests and laymen, singing doleful anddespairing misereres, and bearing the sacred Host with canopy andcrosses, came from one of the side streets, or out of one of thechurches, and proceeded along the Strada. As these processions passed,every one prostrated themselves, with an excess and desperateearnestness of devotion, and many followed the host; but in a moment ortwo those who knelt or those who followed rose or turned away withgestures of despair or distraction, as though incapable of sustainedaction, or of confidence in any remedy. And at this there could be nowonder, since this crowd of people were picking their way amid a mass ofdead corruption on every side of them under their feet. On the stonepavement of the stately Strada, on the palace stairs, on the stepsbefore the churches, lay corpses in every variety of contortion at whichdeath can arrive. Sick people upon beds and heaps of linen--somedelicate and costly, some filthy and decayed--lay mingled with the dead;they had been turned out of the houses, or had deserted them to avoidbeing left to die alone; and every now and then some one of those whowalked apparently in health would lie down, stricken by the heat or bythe plague, and join this prostrate throng, for whom there was no longerin this world any hope of revival.

  This sight, which would have been terrible anywhere, was unutterablydistressing and ghastly in Naples, the city of thoughtless pleasure andof reckless mirth,--a city lying under a blue and cloudless sky, by anazure sea, glowing in the unsurpassable brilliancy and splendour of thesun. As this dazzling blue and gold, before which all colours pale,made the scene the most ghastly that could have been chosen as thetheatre for such an appalling spectacle, so, among a people child-likeand grotesque, seducing the stranger into sympathy with its delight--apeople crowned with flowers, and clothed in colours of every shade, fullof high and gay spirits, and possessed of a conscience that gives nopain--this masque and dance of death assumed an aspect of intolerablehorror. Naples was given over to pantomime and festival, leading dancesand processions with Thyrsis and garlands, and trailing branches offruit. The old Fabulag and farce lingered yet beneath the delicious skyand in the lovely spots of earth that lured the Pagan to dream thatearth was heaven. The poles and scaffolds and dead flowers of the lastfestival still lingered in the streets.


  In this city, turned at once into a charnel-house,--nay, into a hell andplace of torment,--the mighty, unseen hand suddenly struck down itsprey, and without warning seized upon the wretched conscience, allunprepared for such a blow. The cast of a pantomime is a strange sightbeneath the glare and light of mid-day; but here were quacks and nobles,jugglers and soldiers, comic actors and "filosofi," pleasure seekers andmonks, gentry and beggars, all surprised as it were, suddenly, by thelight and glare of the death angel's torch, and crowded upon one levelstage of misery and despair.

  Sick and dizzy with horror, and choked with the deadly smell andmalaria, Inglesant turned into several osteria, but could find no hostin any. In several he saw sights which chilled his blood. At last hegave up the search, and, weary as he was, sought the hospitals. Theapproaches to some of these were so blocked up by the dead and the dyingwho had vainly sought admission, that entrance was impossible. Inothers the galley slaves were at work. In every open spot of groundwhere the earth could be disturbed without cutting off the water pipeswhich ran through the city, trenches had been dug, and the bodies whichwere collected from the streets and hospitals were thrown hastily intothem, and covered with lime and earth. Inglesant strayed into the"Monte della Misericordia," which had recently been cleared of the dead.A few sick persons lay in the beds; but the house seemed wonderfullyclean and sweet, and the rooms cool and fresh. The floors were soakedwith vinegar, and the place was full of the scent of juniper, bayberries, and rosemary, which were burning in every room. It seemed toInglesant like a little heaven and he sank exhausted upon one of thebeds. They brought him some wine, and presently the Signore di Mauro,one of the physicians appointed by the city, who still remained bravelyat his post, came and spoke to him.

  "I perceive that you are a stranger in Naples, and untouched by thedisease," he said. "I am at a loss to account for your presence here.This house is indeed cleared for a moment, but it is the last time thatwe can expect help. The supply of galley slaves is failing, and when itstops entirely, which it must in a few days, I see nothing in the futurebut the general extirpation of all the inhabitants of this fated city,and that its vast circumference, filled with putrefaction and venom,will afterwards be uninhabitable to the rest of mankind."

  This doleful foreboding made little impression upon Inglesant, who was,indeed, too much exhausted both in mind and body to pay much attentionto anything.

  "I am come to Naples," he said faintly, "in search of another; will youlet me stay in this house to-night? I can find no one in the inns."

  "I will do better for you than that," said the good physician; "youshall come to my own house, which is free from infection. I have butone inmate, an old servant, who, I think, is too dry and withered amorsel even for the plague. I am going at once."

  Something in Inglesant's manner probably attracted him, otherwise it isdifficult to account for his kindness to a stranger under suchcircumstances.

  They went out together. Inglesant by chance seemed to be about to turninto another and smaller street--the physician pulled him back hurriedlywith a shudder.

  "Whatever you do," he said in a whisper, "keep to the principalthoroughfares. I dare not recollect--the most heated imagination wouldshrink from conceiving--the unutterable horrors of the bye-streets."

  Picking their way among the dead bodies, which the slaves, withhandkerchiefs steeped in vinegar over their faces, were piling intocarts, the two proceeded down the Strada.

  Inglesant asked the physician how the plague first began in Naples.

  "It is the terrible enemy of mankind," replied the other--he was rathera pompous man, with all his kindness and devotion, and used longwords--"that walks stained with slaughter by night. We know not whenceit comes. Before it are beautiful gardens, crowded habitations, andpopulous cities; behind it unfruitful emptiness and howling desolation.Before it the guards and armies of mighty princes are as dead men, andphysicians are no protection either to the sick or to themselves. Someimagine that it comes from the cities of the East; some that it arisesfrom poverty and famine, and from the tainted and perishing flesh, andunripe fruits and hurtful herbs, which, in times of scarcity and dearth,the starving people greedily devour to satisfy their craving hunger.Others contend that it is inflicted immediately by the hand of God.These are mostly the priests. When we have puzzled our reason, and areat our wit's end through ignorance, we come to that. I have readsomething in a play, written by one of your countrymen--for I perceiveyou are an Englishman--where all mistakes are laid upon the King."

  They were arrived by this time at the physician's house, and werereceived by an old woman whose appearance fully justified her master'sdescription. She provided for Inglesant's wants, and prepared a bed forhim, and he sank into an uneasy and restless sleep. The night wasstiflingly hot, suppressed cries and groans broke the stillness, and thedistant chanting of monks was heard at intervals. Soon after midnightthe churches were again crowded; mass was said, and thousands receivedthe Sacrament with despairing faith. The physician came intoInglesant's room early in the morning.

  "I am going out," he said; "keep as much as possible out of thechurches; they spread the contagion. The magistrates wished to closethem, but the superstitious people would not hear of it. I will makeinquiries, and if any of the religious, or any one else, has heard yourfriend's name, I will send you word. I may not return."

  Shortly after he was gone, the crowd thronging in one direction beforeInglesant's window caused him to rise and follow. He came to one of theslopes of the hill of Santo Martino, above the city. Here a crowd,composed of every class from a noble down to the lowest lazzaroni, wereengaged, in the clear morning light, in building a small house. Somewere making bricks, some drawing along stones, some carrying timber. Anun had dreamed that were a hermitage erected for her order the plaguewould cease, and the people set to work, with desperate earnestness, tofinish the building. By the wayside up the ascent were set emptybarrels, into which the wealthier citizens dropped gold and jewels toassist the work. As Inglesant was standing by, watching the work, hewas accosted by a dignified, highly bred old gentleman, in a velvet coatand Venice lace, who seemed less absorbed in the general panic than therest.

  "This is a strange sight," he said; "what the tyranny of the Spaniardswas not able to do, the plague has done. When the Spaniard was stormingthe gates the gentlemen of the Borgo Santa Maria and the lazzaronifought each other in the streets, and the gentlemen avowed that theypreferred any degree of foreign tyranny to acknowledging or associatingwith the common people. With this deadly enemy not only at the gatesbut in the very midst of us, gentlemen and lazzaroni toil togetherwithout a thought of suspicion or contempt. The plague has made us allequal. I perceive that you are a stranger. May I ask what has broughtyou into this ill-fated city at such a time?"

  "I am in search of my relation, il Cavaliere di Guardino," repliedInglesant; "do you know such a name?"

  "It seems familiar to me," replied the old gentleman. "Have you reasonto suppose that he is in Naples?"

  Inglesant said that he had.

  "The persons most likely to give you information would be the Signori,the officers of the galleys. They would doubtless be acquainted withthe Cavaliere before the plague became so violent, and would know, atany rate, whether it was his intention to leave Naples or not. Thegalleys lie, as you know, moored together there in the bay, and manyother ships lie near them, upon which persons have taken refuge whobelieve that the plague cannot touch them on the water--an expectationin which, I believe, many have been fatally deceived."

  Inglesant thanked the gentleman, and inquired how it was that heremained so calm and unconcerned amidst the general consternation.

  "I am too old for the plague," he replied; "nothing can touch me butdeath itself. I am also," he continued with a peculiar smile, "thefortunate possessor of a true piece of the holy Cross; so that you see Iam doubly safe."

  Inglesant went at once to the harbour, musing on the way on th
ese lastwords, and wondering whether they were spoken in good faith or irony.

  The scenes in the streets seemed more terrible even than on thepreceding day. The slaves were engaged here and there in removing thebodies, but the task was far beyond their strength. Cries of pain andterror were heard on all sides, and every now and then a maddened wretchwould throw himself from a window, or would rush, naked perhaps, from ahouse, and, stumbling and leaping over the corpses and the dying, likethe demoniac among the tombs, would fling himself in desperation intothe water of the harbour, or over the walls into the moats. One ofthese maniacs, passing close to Inglesant, attempted to embrace apasser-by, who coolly ran him through the body with his sword, thebystanders applauding the act.

  In the harbour corpses were floating, which a few slaves in boats werefeebly attempting to drag together with hooks. They escaped theirefforts, and rose and sank with a ghastly resemblance to life. Upon thequay Inglesant fortunately found the physician, Signore Mauro, who washimself going on board the galleys to endeavour to procure the loan ofmore slaves. He offered to take Inglesant with him.

  As they went the physician told him he had not discovered any trace ofthe Cavaliere; but what was very curious, he said, many other personsappeared to be engaged in the same search. It might be that all thesepeople were in fact but one, multiplied by the forgetfulness, and by theexcited imaginations, of those from whom Signore Mauro had obtained hisinformation; but, if these persons were to be believed, monks, friars,physicians, soldiers, and even ladies, were engaged in this singularsearch in a city where all ties of friendship were forgotten, for a manwhom no one knew.

  As they shot over the silent water, and by the shadowy hulks of shipslying idle and untended, with the cry of the city of the dead behindthem and the floating corpses around, Inglesant listened to thephysician as a man listens in a dream. Long shadows stretched across theharbour, which sparkled beneath the rays of the newly-risen sun; asudden swoon stole over Inglesant's spirits, through which the voice ofthe physician sounded distant and faint. He gave himself up for lost,yet he felt a kind of dim expectation that something was about to happenwhich these unknown inquirers foretold.

  The galleys lay moored near together, with several other ships of largesize in company. Signore Mauro climbed to the quarter-deck of thelargest galley, on which the commodore was, and Inglesant followed him,still hardly knowing what he did. The oars were shipped, but the slaveswere chained to their benches, as though the galleys were at sea. Theywere singing and playing at cards. Upon the quarterdeck, pointing tothe long files of slaves, were two loaded howitzers, behind each ofwhich stood a gunner with a lighted match. Soldiers, heavily armed andwith long whips, paraded the raised gangway or passage, which ran thewhole length of the ship between the rows of benches upon which theslaves were placed. The officers were mostly on the quarter-deck; theylooked pale and excited, though it was singular that few or no cases ofthe plague had occurred among the slaves who remained on board. Thedecks were washed with vinegar, and the galleys and slaves were muchcleaner than usual.

  The physician stated his request to the commander, who ordered tenslaves from every galley to be sent on shore. Some were wanted to act asbakers, some as butchers, most of the artizans in the city having fledor perished. A boatswain was ordered to make the selection. He choseone or two, and then called upon the rest to volunteer. Inglesant wasstanding by him on the gangway, looking down the files of slaves. Therewere men of every age, of every rank, and almost of every country. Asthe boatswain gave the word, every hand was held up; to all these mendeath was welcome at the end of two or three days' change of life,abundance of food, and comparative freedom. The boatswain selected tenby chance.

  Signore Mauro inquired among the officers concerning the Cavaliere, butcould obtain no positive information. Most had heard the name, someprofessed to have known him intimately; all united in saying he had leftNaples. Inglesant and the physician visited two or three other galleys,but with no greater success. They returned on shore as the heat wasbecoming intense; the churches were crowded, and the Holy Sacrament wasexhibited every few moments. The physician refused to enter any ofthem.

  Then Inglesant determined to try the hospitals again. He went to the"Santa Casa degli Incurabile," which the day before he had not been ableto approach for the dying and the dead. The slaves had worked hard allnight, and hundreds of corpses had been removed and buried in a vasttrench without the wall of the hospital. Inglesant passed through manyof the rooms, and spoke to several of the religious persons who weretending the sick, but could learn nothing of the object of his search.At last one of the monks conducted him into the strange room called the"Anticamera di Morte," to which, in more orderly times, the patientswhose cases were hopeless were removed.

  There, at the last extremity of life, before they were hurried into thegreat pit outside the walls, lay the plague-stricken. Some unconscious,yet with fearful throes and gasps awaiting their release; some in anagony of pain and death, crying upon God and the Saints. Kneeling bythe bedsides were several monks; but at the farther end of the room,bending over a sick man, was a figure in a friar's gown that madeInglesant stop suddenly, and his heart beat quicker as he caught hiscompanion's arm.

  "Who is that friar, Father?" he said, "the one at the end, bending overthe bed?"

  "Ah! that," said the priest, "that is Father Grazia of the Capuchins; avery holy man, and devoted to mortification and good works. He isblind, though he moves about so cleverly. He says that, to within thelast few years, his life was passed in every species of sin; and herelates that he was solemnly given over to the vengeance of the blessedGesu by his mortal enemy, the minion of a Cardinal, and that the Lordhas afflicted him with untold sorrows and sufferings to bring him toHimself, and to a life of holy mortification and charity, which he leadsunceasingly--night and day. He is but now come in hither, knowing thatthe sick man by whose bed he is, is dying of the plague in its mostfearful form,--a man whom none willingly will approach. Mostly he is inthe vilest dens of the city, reeking with pestilence, where to go, toall save him, is certain death. His holiness and the Lord's will keephim, so that the plague cannot touch him. Ah! he is coming this way."

  It was true. The friar had suddenly started from his recumbentposition, conscious that the man before him was no more. At the samemoment, his mind, released from the attention which had riveted itbefore, seemed to become aware of a presence in the chamber of deathwhich was of the intensest interest. He came down the passage in thecentre of the room with an eager unfaltering step, as though able tosee, and coming to within a few feet of the two men, he stopped, andlooked towards them with an excited glance, as though he saw theirfaces. Inglesant was embarrassed, and hesitated whether to recognizehim or not. At last, pitying the look in the blind man's face, hesaid,--

  "This holy Father is not unknown to me, though I know not that he woulddesire to meet me again. I am 'the minion of a Cardinal' of whom youspoke."

  The friar stretched out his hands before him, with an eager, delightedgesture.

  "I knew it," he said; "I felt your presence long before you spoke. Itsignifies little whether I am glad to find you or no. It is part of theLord's purpose that we should meet."

  "This is a strange and sanctified meeting," said the priest, "in theroom of death, and by the beds of the dead. Doubtless you have much tosay that can only be said to yourselves alone."

  "I cannot stay," said the friar, wildly. "I came in here but for amoment; for this wretched man who is gone to his account needed one aswretched and as wicked as himself. But they are dying now in the streetsand alleys, calling upon the God whom they know not; they need thevilest sinner to whom the Lord has been gracious to kneel by their side;they need the vilest sinner; therefore I must go."

  He stopped for a moment, then he said more calmly,--"Meet me in theSanta Chiara, behind the altar, by the tomb of the wise King, thisevening at sunset. By that time, though the need will be as pressing,yet the fr
ail body will need a little rest, and I will speak with youfor an hour. Fail not to come. You will learn how your sword was thesword, and your breath was the breath of the Lord."

  "I will surely be there," said Inglesant.

  The friar departed, leaving the priest and Inglesant alone. They wentout into the garden of the hospital, a plot of ground planted withfruit-trees, and with vines trailing over the high stone walls. Walkingup and down in the shade, with the intense blue of the sky overhead, onemight for a time forget the carnival of death that was crowding everystreet and lane around. Inglesant inquired of his companion moreparticularly concerning the friar.

  "He is a very holy man," said the priest, with a significant gesture;"but he is not right in his head. His sufferings have touched hisbrain. He believes that he has seen the Lord in a vision, and not onlyso, but that all Rome was likewise a witness of the miracle. It is awonderful story, which doubtless he wishes to relate to you thisevening."