Part 5 (2/2)

Its results may be prosaically summed up as heat, haste, and headache, with a confused vision of the past and a most fragmentary sense of the present.

CAPRI.

I have a fresh chapter of torment for a new Dante, if such an one could be induced to apply to me. I will not expatiate, nor exhale any Francesca episodes, any ”_Lasciate ogni spiranza!_” I will be succinct and business-like, furnis.h.i.+ng the outlines from which some more leisurely artist, better paid and employed, shall do his h.e.l.l-painting.

We leave enchanting Naples,--tear ourselves from our hotel, whose very impositions grow dear to us; the precious window, too, which shows the bay and Capri, and close at hand the boats, the fish-market, and the chairs on which the populace sit at eventide to eat oysters and drink mineral water. A small boat takes us to a very small steamer, on whose deck we pay ten francs each to a stout young man, in appearance much like a southern poor Buckra, who departs in another small boat as soon as he has plundered us. The voyage to Capri is cool and reasonably smooth. A pleasant chance companion, bound to the same port, beguiles the time for us. We exchange our intellectual small wares with a certain good will, which remains the best part of the bargain. When quite near the island, the small steamer pauses, and lowers a boat in which we descend to view the famous Blue Grotto. At the entrance, we are warned to stoop as low as possible. We do so, and still the entrance seems dangerous. With some scratching and pus.h.i.+ng, however, the boat goes through, and the lovers of blue feast their eyes with the tender color.

The water is ultramarine, and the roof sapphire. The place seems a toy of nature--a forced detention of a single ray of the spectrum. Dyes change with the fas.h.i.+on; the blue of our youth does not color our daughter's silks and ribbons. The purples of ten years ago cannot be met with to-day. But this blue is constant, and therefore perfect.

Our enjoyment of it, however, is marred by an old beast in human form who rushes at us, and insists upon being paid two francs for diving. He promises us that he will show us wondrous things--that he will fill the azure cave with silver sparkles. Wearied with his screeching, and a little deluded by his promises, we weakly offer him a franc and a half; whereupon he throws off some superfluous clothing, and softly glides into the deep, without so much as a single sparkle. He certainly presents an odd appearance; his weird legs look as if twisted out of silver; his back is dark upon the water. But the refres.h.i.+ng bath he takes is so little worth thirty sous to us that we feel tempted to harpoon him as he dodges about, sure that, if pierced, he can shed nothing more solid than humbug. On our return to the steamer we pay two francs each for this melancholy expedition, and presently make the little harbor of Capri.

And here the promised h.e.l.l begins. The way to it, remember, is always pleasant. No sooner does our boat touch the land than a nest of human rattlesnakes begins to coil and hiss about us, each trying to carry us off, each pouring into our ears discordant, rapid jargon. ”My donkey, siora.” ”And mine.” ”And mine.” ”How much will you give?” ”Will you go up to Tiberio?” But all this with more repet.i.tion and less music than a chorus of Handel's or an aria of Sebastian Bach. ”My donkey,” flourish; ”My do-n-onkey,” high soprano variation; ”My donkey,” good grumbling contralto. ”How much?” ”How much?” ”How much?” ”How much?” shriek all in chorus. And you, the unhappy star in this h.e.l.l opera, begin with uncertain utterance--”Let me see, good people. One at a time. What is just I will pay”--the _motivo_ also repeated; chorus renewed--”Money;”

”Three francs;” ”Four francs;” ”Five francs;” ”A _bottiglia_;” ”A _buona mano_.” A _buona mano_? Good hand--would one could administer it in the right way, in the right place! By this time each of you occupies the warm saddle of a donkey, and at one P. M., less twenty, the thermometer at 90 Fahrenheit or more, and being warned to reach the steamer by three P. M., at latest, the punishment of all your past, and most of your future sins begins.

_Facile descensus Averni._ Yes; but the _ascensus_? To climb so high after Tiberio, who went so low! For this is the ruined palace of Tiberius Caesar himself, which you go to seek and see, if possible. He still plagues the world, as he would have wished to do. Your expedition in search of his stony vestiges is a long network of torment, spun by you, the donkey, and the donkey-driver, undisguised Apollo standing by to weld the golden chains by which you suffer. As often as you seem to approach the object, a new _detour_ leads you at a zigzag from the straight direction. But this is little. At every turn in the road a beggar, in some variety, addresses you. Now a deformed wretch shows you his twisted limbs, and shrieks, ”_co cosa, siora_.” Now, a wholesome-looking mother, with a small child, asks a contribution to the wants of ”_questa creatura_” Now, a grandam, with blackened face and bleached hair, hobbles after you. Children oppress you with flowers, women with oranges,--all in view of the largest _quid_ for the smallest _quo_. You grow afraid to look in a pretty face or return a civil nod, lest the eternal signal of beggary should make itself manifest. And such women and children!--every one a picture. Such intense eyes, such sun-ripened complexions! I take note of them, handsome devils that they are, all foreordained as a part of my fiery probation. For all this time I am making a steep ascent. Sometimes the donkey takes me up a flight of stone steps, clutching at each with an uncertain quiver, but stimulated by the nasal ”n--a--a--a,” which follows him from the woman who by turns coaxes and threatens him. Now we clamber along a narrow ledge, whose height causes my dizzy head to swim; there is nothing but special providence between me and perdition. A little girl, six years of age, pulls my donkey by the head; a dignified matron behind me holds the whip. The little girl leads carelessly, and I quake and grow hot and cold with terror; but it is of no use. The matron will not take the rein; her office is to flog, and she will do nought else. And the sun?--the sun works his miracles upon us until we wish ourselves as well off as the Niobides, who, at least, look cool. Finally, after an hour of jolting, roasting, quivering, and general exasperation, we reach the top. Here we are pa.s.sively lifted from our donkeys; we mechanically follow our guide through a white-washed wine-shop into a small outer s.p.a.ce, with a low wall around it, over which we are invited to look down some hundreds of feet into the sea. This is called the Leap of Tiberio: from this height, says the barefooted old vagabond who guides us, he pitched his victims into the deep. The descent here is as straight as the wall of a house. Farther on, we find some very fragmentary ruins, in the usual Roman style. Among them is a good mosaic pavement, with some vaults and broken columns. A sloping way is shown us, carefully paved, and with a groove on either side. Into this, say they, fitted the wheels of a certain chariot, in which guests were invited to seat themselves.

The chariot, guided by two cords, then started to go down to the sea.

But at a certain moment the vehicle was arrested by a sudden shock.

Those within it were precipitated into the water, after which the cords comfortably drew the chariot back.

I have never heard any of the evidence upon which is based the modern rehabilitation of Tiberius and Nero. I have, however, found in the stately Tacitus, and even in gossipy Suetonius, a shudder of horror accompanying the narration of their deeds. The world has seen cruelty in all ages, and sees it still; but I cannot believe that the average standard of humanity can justly be lowered so far as to make the acts of Tiberius simply rigorous, those of Nero a little arbitrary. Mr. Carlyle, in dealing with the French revolution, reprobates the hysterical style of reviewing painful events; but in the history of Rome under the Caesars we hear too plainly the sobs and shrieks of the victims to be satisfied with the modern philosophizing which would deprive them of our compa.s.sion. Man is naturally cruel; superst.i.tion makes him more so. A genuine religion alone softens his ferocious instincts, and places the centre of action and obligation elsewhere than in his own pleasure or personal advantage. Man is also compa.s.sionate; but without the systematic formation of morals, his weak compa.s.sion will not compensate the ardor of his self-a.s.sertion, which may involve all crimes. Luxury exaggerates cruelty, because it intensifies the action of the selfish interests, and loosens the rein of restraint--its objects and the objects of morals being incompatible. The most cruel characters have been those presenting this admixture of luxury and ferocity. The silken noose gives finer and more atrocious death than the iron sword.

I think that the (unless vilified) wretch Tiberius built this palace in fear, and dwelt in it in torment. In its fastnesses he felt himself safe from the knife of the a.s.sa.s.sin. In the leisure of its isolation he could meditate murders with aesthetic deliberation, and hurl his bolts of death upon the world below, remorseless and unattainable as Jove himself.

Here is an episode of philosophizing in the h.e.l.l I promised you. But h.e.l.l itself would not be complete without the b.u.t.ton-bore--the man or woman who holds you by a theory, and detains you amid life's intensity to attend the slow circlings of an elaborative brain.

I have now finished Tiberio. The donkeys brought us down with more danger, more heat, more fear and clatter. Only beggary diminishes, a little discouraged, in our rear. It seems to have been given out that we have no small change, as is indeed the fact; so the young and old only grumble after us enough to keep their hand in. In compensation for this, however, a new trouble is added, viz., the danger of losing the small steamboat, which threatens to leave at three P. M., a period by this time scarce half an hour distant. Yet a bit of bread we must have at the hotel. It is the former palace of Queen Joanna; but we do not know it at the moment, and nothing leads us to suspect it. Here two good-natured English faces make us for the moment at home. A cup of tea,--the English and American restorative for all fatigues,--a wholesome slice of bread and b.u.t.ter, a moderate charge, and ten minutes of cool seclusion, make the Hotel di Tiberio pleasant in our recollection. And then we remount, and, the little steamer beginning to manoeuvre, our haste and anxiety become extreme; so we take no more heed of steep or narrow, but the donkeys and we make one headlong business of it down to the beach, where we have still to make a secondary embarkation before reaching the steamer. Here, as we had foreseen, the final crush attends us. The guide and each of the donkey girls and women insist upon separate payment. With grim satisfaction I fling a five-franc note for the whole.

It is too much, but the whole island cannot or will not give change for it. And then ensues much shrieking, expostulation, and gesticulation, in the midst of which I plunge into the boat, make my bargain with Charon, and am for the time out of h.e.l.l. As I looked back, methought I saw Stefano the guide and the women having it out pretty well with reference to the undivided fee. Stefano leaped wildly into the sea after me, and extorted five more _soldi_ from my confusion. Finally, I exhort all good Christians to beware of Capri, and on no account to throw away a trip thither, but to undertake the same as a penance, for the mortification of the flesh and the good of the immortal soul. The island is to-day in as heathen a condition as Tiberius himself could wish; only from a golden, it has descended to the perpetual invoking of a copper rain.

That the Beggar's Opera should have been written out of the kingdom of Naples is a matter of reasonable astonishment to the logically inferring mind. I could improvise it myself on the spur of the moment, making a heroine out of the black-eyed woman who drove my animal--black-haired also, and with a scarlet cotton handkerchief bound around her head in careless picturesqueness. Gold ear-rings and necklace had she who screamed and begged so for a penny more than her due. And when I cried aloud in fear, she replied, ”_Non abbia timor--donkey molt' avezzo_;”

which diverted my mind, and caused me to laugh. As we went up and as we went down, she encountered all her friends and gossips in holiday attire; for yesterday was _Festa_, and to-day, consequently, is _festa_ also--a saint's day leaving many small arrearages to settle, in the shape of headache, fight, and so on, so that one does not comfortably get to work again until the third day. This fact of the antecedent _festa_ accounted for the unusual amount of good clothes displayed throughout the island. Our eyes certainly profited by it, and possibly our purses; for we just remember that one or two groups in velvet jackets and gold necklaces did not beg.

But all of this is a superfluous after-digression, as I am really, in my narrative, already on board of the little steamer, with the charitable waves between me and the brigand Caprians. A pleasant sail--not so smooth but that it made the Italian pa.s.sengers ill--brought us to Sorrento. Here our trunk was hoisted on the head of a stout fellow, all the small fry of the harbor squabbling for our minor luggage. We climbed a long, steep flight of stone steps, walked through a shady orange garden, and came out upon a cool terrace fronting the sea, with the Rispoli Hotel behind it. Here we were to stay; our bargain was soon made, with the divine prospect thrown in. Our room was on the ground floor, behind a shallow arcade paved with majolica. Shaking off the dust of travel, and ranging our few effects in the rather narrow quarters, we at once took possession of the prospect, and regulated ourselves accordingly.

SORRENTO.

Ugh! after the roasting, hurried day at Capri, how delicious was the first morning's rest at Sorrento! The coral merchant came and went. We did not allow him to trouble us. They offered us the hotel a.s.ses; we did not engage them. The blue sea, the purple mountains, the green, rustling orange groves,--these were enough for us, pieced with the writing of these ragged notes, and a little dipping into our Horace, who, it must be confessed, goes lamely without a dictionary. A day of lights and shadows, of suns.h.i.+ne and silence, of pains caressed, and fatigues whose healing was sweeter than fresh repose. And we dreamed of novels that we could write beneath this romance-forging sun, and how the commonplace men and women about us should take grandiose shapes of good and ill, and figure as ideals, no longer as atoms. We would forsake our scholastic anatomy, and make studies of real life, with color and action. For this, as we know, we should need at least six months of freedom, which perhaps the remnant of our mortal lives does not offer. Meantime we sit and dream. Each sees the content of the landscape reflected in the other's eyes. We sit just within our room, the little writing-table half within, half without the window, that reaches to the ground. The soft breeze flutters our pages to and fro. We scold it caressingly, as one reproves the overplay of a gracious child. With the exception of an occasional straggling visitor, the whole terrace is ours. Now and then we forsake the writing-table, rush to the railing that borders the terrace, and take a good look up and down, to a.s.sure ourselves that what we see is real, and founded on terra firma. Here our wearied nerves shall bathe in seas of heavenly rest. As to our suffering finances, too,--if one word is not too often profaned for us to profane it, we will quote Horace's

”mox reficit rates qua.s.sas,”

not

”indociles pauperiem pati”

<script>