Part 10 (2/2)

The doctor had been told by a _commare_ that in one of the _ba.s.si_ in Orto del Conte lay a dying woman, and that her husband had been _avvelenato_[42] in the hospital the day before. He went there the same evening, but it was with great difficulty that he succeeded in getting through the hostile crowd which had a.s.sembled in front of the infected house. He heard that the husband had been removed almost by force to the hospital, that he had there died, and that when, a couple of hours afterwards, they had tried to remove his wife too, who had been attacked in the night, the people had opposed it, a _carabiniere_ had been stabbed, and the others had had to save their lives by flight. As usual, the unfortunate doctors bore the blame of all the evil, and he heard all around him in the crowd the well-known epithets of ”Ammazzacane!”

”a.s.sa.s.sino!”[43] ”Avvelenatore!”[44] After several fruitless efforts to gain their confidence and make friends with them, he had no choice but to give up all attempts of helping the sick woman and to wait till Don Dionisio came. As soon as he entered the room the attention of every one was at once fixed upon him and his Madonna, and they all fell on their knees and prayed fervently, without caring in the least about either the patient or the doctor. The woman was in _Stadium algidum_,[45] but her pulse was still perceptible. Strong in the confidence of his previous successes, the doctor went to work. He had hardly finished before the heart began to flag. Just as Don Dionisio with triumphant voice announced that the miracle was done, the death-agony began, and it was with the greatest difficulty that the doctor could keep up the action of the heart until the Madonna del Buon Cammino had left the house, followed by the crowd outside in solemn procession. Shortly afterwards the doctor slipped out of the house like a thief, and ran for his life to the corner of the Via del Duomo, where he knew he would be in safety.

The same night three of his patients died. He did his utmost to prevent Don Dionisio accompanying him the following day, but in vain. Every one of the sick he visited and treated that day died under his eyes.

The wings which had borne him during those days had fallen from his shoulders, and dead tired he wandered home in the evening with Don Dionisio at his side. They said good-night to each other in front of the chapel of the Madonna del Buon Cammino, and in the flickering light of the lamp before her shrine the doctor saw a deathly pallor spread over his friend's face. The old man tottered and fell, with the Madonna in his arms. The doctor carried him into the chapel and laid him upon the straw bed where he slept, in a corner behind a curtain. He placed the Madonna del Buon Cammino carefully on her stand, and poured oil for the night into the little lamp which burned over her head. Don Dionisio motioned with his hand to be moved nearer, and the doctor dragged his bed forward to the pedestal of the image. ”_Come e bella, come e simpatica!_” said he, with feeble voice. He lay there quite motionless and silent, with his eyes intently fixed upon his beloved Madonna. The doctor sat all night long by his side, whilst his strength diminished more and more and he slowly grew cold. One votive candle after another flickered and went out, and the shadows fell deeper and deeper in the chapel of the Madonna del Buon Cammino. Then it became all dark, and only the little oil-lamp as of old spread its trembling light over the pale waxen image with the impa.s.sive smile upon her rigid features.

The next day the doctor fainted in the street, and was picked up and taken to the Cholera Hospital. And, indomitable as fate, death swept over the street of the Madonna del Buon Cammino, over Vicolo del Monaco.

For it was Vicolo del Monaco--that name which filled Naples with terror, and which, through the newspapers, was known to the whole world as the place where the cholera raged in its fiercest form.[46]

The dark little chapel which sheltered the old visionary's confused devotion has been razed to the ground by the new order of things which has dawned over Naples at last, and Vicolo del Monaco is no more. Don Dionisio sank unconscious from the dim thought-world of his superst.i.tion into the impenetrable darkness of the great grave up there on the Campo Santo dei Colerosi.

The other, the fool, who for a moment had believed he could command Death to stop short in his triumphant march, he is still alive, but with the bitter vision of reality for all time shadowing his sight. So will he sink, he also, into the great grave of oblivion; and of all those who lived and suffered in the Vicolo del Monaco nothing will remain--nothing.

But behind a curtain in some dark little chapel stands the Madonna del Buon Cammino, with the impa.s.sive smile upon her rigid features.

[Footnote 34: ”How beautiful, how sympathetic she is!”]

[Footnote 35: ”Madonna del Carmine indeed!”]

[Footnote 36: ”Your Madonna has not even got any hair on her head!”]

[Footnote 37: ”They say she has got no hair! but we shall soon see who has the most beautiful hair!”]

[Footnote 38: Gossips.]

[Footnote 39: ”Go and make thyself another gown, poor thing! Blessed San Gennaro, what an ugly face they have given her, poor old creature!”]

[Footnote 40: ”Save me, save me, most holy Madonna!”]

[Footnote 41: Cholera cemetery.]

[Footnote 42: Poisoned.]

[Footnote 43: ”Dog-murderer!” ”a.s.sa.s.sin!”]

[Footnote 44: ”Poisoner!”]

[Footnote 45: The state of collapse, characteristic of cholera, when the body becomes cold.]

[Footnote 46: Almost the whole alley died. An official report stated that there were over thirty cases in a single hour.]

THE END

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