Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

"The seat of the brotherhood is in the place _del Duomo_. Each
brother has there, marked with his own name, a box enclosing a
black robe like that of the _penitents_, with openings only for
the eyes and mouth, in order that his good actions may have the
further merit of being performed in secret. Immediately that
the news of any accident or disaster is brought to the brother
who is upon guard, the bell sounds its alarm, once, twice, or
thrice, according to the gravity of the case; and at the sound
of the bell every brother, wherever he may be, is bound to
retire at the instant, and hasten to the rendezvous. There he
learns what misfortune or what suffering has claimed his pious
offices; he puts on his black robe and a broad hat, takes the
taper in his hand, and goes forth where the voice of misery has
called him. If it is some wounded man, they bear him to the
hospital; if the man is dead, to a chapel: the nobleman and the
day labourer, clothed with the same robe, support together the
same litter, and the link which unites these two extremes of
society is some sick pauper, who, knowing neither, is praying
equally for both. And when these brothers of mercy have quitted
the house, the children whose father they have carried out, or
the wife whose husband they have borne away, have but to look
around them, and always, on some worm-eaten piece of furniture,
there will be found a pious alms, deposited by an unknown hand.

"The Grand-duke himself is a member of this fraternity, and I
have been assured that more than once, at the sound of that
melancholy bell, he has clothed himself in the uniform of
charity, and penetrated unknown, side by side with a
day-labourer, to the bed's head of some dying wretch, and that
his presence had afterwards been detected only by the alms he
had left behind."--p. 126.

It is not to be supposed that our dramatist pursues the same direct and unadventurous route that lies open to every citizen of Paris and London. At the end of the first volume we leave him still at Florence; we open the second, and we find him and his companion Jadin, and his companion's dog Milord, standing at the port of Naples, looking out for some vessel to take them to Sicily. So that we have travels in Italy with Rome left out. Not that he did not visit Rome, but that we have no "souvenirs" of his visit here. As the book is a mere _capriccio_, there can be no possible objection taken to it on this score. Besides, the island of Sicily, which becomes the chief scene of his adventures, is less beaten ground. Nor do we hear much of Naples, for he quits Naples almost as soon as he had entered it. This last fact requires explanation.

M. Dumas has had the honour to be an object of terror or of animosity to crowned heads. When at Genoa, his Sardinian Majesty manifested this hostility to M. Dumas--we presume on account of his too liberal politics--by dispatching an emissary of the police to notify to him that he must immediately depart from Genoa. Which emissary of his Sardinian Majesty had no sooner delivered his royal sentence of deportation, than he extended his hand for a _pour boire_. Either M. Dumas must be a far more formidable person than we have any notion of, or majesty can be very nervous, or very spiteful. And now, when he is about to enter Naples----but why do we presume to relate M. Dumas's personal adventures in any other language than his own? or language as near his own as we--who are, we must confess, imperfect translators--can hope to give.

"The very evening of our arrival at Naples, Jadin and I ran to
the port to enquire if by chance any vessel, whether steam-boat
or sailing packet, would leave on the morrow for Sicily. As it
is not the ordinary custom for travellers to go to Naples to
remain there a few hours only, let me say a word on the
circumstance that compelled us to this hasty departure.

"We had left Paris with the intention of traversing the whole
of Italy, including Sicily and Calabria; and, putting this
project into scrupulous execution, we had already visited Nice,
Genoa, Milan, Florence, and Rome, when, after a sojourn of
about three weeks at this last city, I had the honour to meet,
at the Marquis de P----'s, our own _chargé des affaires_, the
Count de Ludorf, the Neapolitan ambassador. As I was to leave
in a few days for Naples, the Marquis introduced me to his
brother in diplomacy. M. de Ludorf received me with that cold
and vacant smile which pledges to nothing; nevertheless, after
this introduction, I thought myself bound to carry to him our
passports myself. M. de Ludorf had the civility to tell me to
deposit the passports at his office, and to call there for them
the day after the morrow.

"Two days having elapsed, I accordingly presented myself at the
office: I found a clerk there, who, with the utmost politeness,
informed me that some difficulties having arisen on the subject
of my _visa_, I had better make an application to the
ambassador himself. I was obliged, therefore, whatever
resolution I had made to the contrary, to present myself again
to M. de Ludorf.

"I found the ambassador more cold, more measured than before,
but reflecting that it would probably be the last time I should
have the honour of seeing him, I resigned myself. He motioned
to me to take a chair. This was some improvement upon the last
visit; the last visit he left me standing.

"'Monsieur,' said he, with a certain air of embarrassment, and
drawing out, one after the other, the folds of his shirt-front,
'I regret to say that you cannot go to Naples.'

"'Why so?' I replied, determined to impose upon our dialogue
whatever tone I thought fit--'are the roads so bad?'

"'No, monsieur; the roads are excellent, but you have the
misfortune to be on the list of those who cannot enter the
kingdom of Naples.'

"'However honourable such a distinction may be, monsieur
l'ambassadeur,' said I, suiting my tone to the words, 'it will
at present be rather inconvenient, and I trust you will permit
me to inquire into the cause of this prohibition. If it is
nothing but one of those slight and vexatious interruptions
which one meets with perpetually in Italy, I have some friends
about the world who might have influence sufficient to remove
it.'

"'The cause is one of a grave nature, and I doubt if your
friends, of whatever rank they may be, will have influence to
remove it.'

"'What may it be?'

"'In the first place, you are the son of General Matthieu
Dumas, who was minister of war at Naples during the usurpation
of Joseph.'

"'I am sorry,' I answered, 'to be obliged to decline any
relationship with that illustrious general. My father was not
General Matthieu, but General Alexandre Dumas. The same,' I
continued, seeing that he was endeavouring to recall some
reminiscences connected with the name of Dumas, 'who, after
having been made prisoner at Tarentum, in contempt of the
rights of hospitality, was poisoned at Brindisi, with Mauscourt
and Dolomieu, in contempt of the rights of nations. This
happened, monsieur l'ambassadeur, at the same time that they
hanged Carracciolo in the Gulf of Naples. You see I do all I
can to assist your recollection.'

"M. de Ludorf bit his lips.

"'Well, monsieur,' he resumed after a moment's silence, 'there
is a second reason--your political opinions. You are marked out
as a republican, and have quitted Paris, it is said, on some
political design.'

"'To which I answer, monsieur, by showing you my letters of
introduction. They bear nearly all the seals and signatures of
our ministers. Here is one from the Admiral Jacob, another from
Marshal Soult, another from M. de Villemain; they claim for me
the aid of the French ambassador in any case of this
description.'

"'Well, well,' said M. de Ludorf, 'since you have foreseen the
very difficulty that has occurred, meet it with those means
which are in your power. For me, I repeat, I cannot sign your
passport. Those of your companions are quite regular; they can
proceed when they please; but they must proceed without you.'

"'Has the Count de Ludorf' said I, rising, 'any commissions for
Naples?'

"'Why so, monsieur?'

"'Because I shall have great pleasure in undertaking them.'

"'But I repeat, you cannot go to Naples.'

"'I shall be there in three days.'

"I wished M. de Ludorf good morning, and left him stupefied at
my assurance."--Vol. ii. p. 5.

Our dramatical traveller ran immediately to a young friend, an artist then studying at Rome, and prevailed on him to take out a passport, in his own name for Naples. Fortified with this passport, and assuming the name of his friend, he left Rome that evening. The following day he reached Naples. But as he was exposed every moment to detection, it was necessary that he should pass over immediately to Sicily. The steam-boats at Naples, unlike the steam-boats every where else, start at no fixed period. The captain waits for his contingent of passengers, and till this has been obtained both he and his vessel are immovable. M. Dumas and his companion, therefore, hired a small sailing vessel, a _speronara_ as it is called, in which they embarked the next morning. But before weighing anchor M. Dumas took from his portfolio the neatest, purest, whitest, sheet of paper that it contained, and indited the following letter to the Count de Ludorf:--

"Monsieur le Comte,

"I am distressed that your excellency did not think fit to
charge me with your commissions for Naples. I should have
executed them with a fidelity which would have convinced you of
the grateful recollection I retain of your kind offices.

"Accept, M. le Comte, the assurance of those lively sentiments
which I entertain towards you, and of which, one day or other,
I hope to give you proof.

"ALEX. DUMAS."

"Naples, 23d Aug. 1835."

With the crew of this _speronara_ we became as familiar as with the personages of a novel; and, indeed, about this time the novelist begins to predominate over the tourist.

On leaving the bay of Naples our traveller first makes for the island of Capri. The greatest curiosity which he here visits and describes in the _azure grotto_. He and his companion are rowed, each in a small skiff, to a narrow dark aperture upon the rocky coast, and which appears the darker from its contrast with the white surf that is dashing about it. He is told to lie down on his back in the boat, to protect his head from a concussion against the low roof.

"In a moment after I was borne upon the surge--the bark glided
on with rapidity--I saw nothing but a dark rock, which seemed
for a second to be weighing on my chest. Then on a sudden I
found myself in a grotto so marvellous that I uttered a cry of
astonishment, and started up in my admiration with a bound
which endangered the frail bark on which I stood.

"I had before me, around me, above me, beneath me, a perfect
enchantment, which words cannot describe, and which the pencil
would utterly fail to give any impression of. Imagine an
immense cavern, all pure azure--as if God had made a tent there
with some residue of the firmament; a surface of water so
limpid, so transparent, that you seem to float on air: above
you, the pendant stalactites, huge and fantastical, reversed
pyramids and pinnacles: below you a sand of gold mingled with
marine vegetation; and around the margin of cave, where it is
bathed by the water, the coral shooting out its capricious and
glittering branches. That narrow entrance which, from the sea,
showed like a dark spot, now shone at one end a luminous point,
the solitary star which gave its subdued light to this fairy
palace; whilst at the opposite extremity a sort of alcove led
on the imagination to expect new wonders, or perhaps the
apparition of the nymph or goddess of the place.

"In all probability the azure grotto was unknown to the
ancients. No poet speaks of it; and surely with their
marvellous imagination the Greeks could not have failed to make
it the palace of some marine goddess, and to have transmitted
to us her history. The sea, perhaps, was higher than it is now,
and the secrets of this cave were known only to Amphitrite and
her court of sirens, naiads, and tritons.

"Even now at times the sea rises and closes the orifice, so
that those who have entered cannot escape. In which case they
must wait till the wind, which had suddenly shifted to the east
or west, returns to the north or south; and it has happened
that visitors who came to spend twenty minutes in the azure
grotto, have remained there two, three, and even four days. To
provide against such an emergency, the boatmen always bring
with them a certain quantity of biscuit to feed the prisoners,
and as the rock affords fresh water in several places, there is
no fear of thirst. It was not till we had been in the grotto
some time that our boatmen communicated this piece of
information; we were disposed to reproach them for this delay,
but they answered with the utmost simplicity, that if they told
this at first to travellers, half of them would decline coming,
and this would injure the boatmen.

"I confess that this little piece of information raised a
certain disquietude, and I found the azure grotto infinitely
less agreeable to the imagination.... We again laid ourselves
down at the bottom of our respective canoes, and issued forth
with the same precautions, and the same good fortune, with
which we had entered. But we were some minutes before we could
open our eyes; the burning sun upon the glittering ocean
absolutely blinded us. We had not gone many yards, however,
before the eye recovered itself, and all that we had seen in
the azure grotto had the consistency of a dream."

From Capri our travellers proceed to Sicily. We have a long story and a violent storm upon the passage, and are landed at Messina. Here M. Dumas enlarges his experience by an acquaintance with the _Sirocco_. His companion, M. Jadin, had been taken ill, and a physician had been called in.

"The doctor had ordered that the patient (who was suffering
under a fever) should be exposed to all the air possible, that
doors and windows should be opened, and he should be placed in
the current. This was done; but on the present evening, to my
astonishment, instead of the fresh breeze of the night--which
was wont to blow the fresher from our neighbourhood to the
sea--there entered at the open window a dry hot wind like the
air from a furnace. I waited for the morning, but the morning
brought no change in the state of the atmosphere.

"My patient had suffered greatly through the night. I rang the
bell for some lemonade, the only drink the doctor had
recommended; but no one answered the summons. I rang again, and
a third time: still no one came; at length seeing that the
mountain would not come to me, I went to the mountain. I
wandered through the corridor, and entered apartment after
apartment, and found no one to address. It was nine o'clock in
the morning, yet the master and mistress of the house had not
left their room, and not a domestic was at his post. It was
quite incomprehensible.

"I descended to the portico; I found him lying on an old sofa
all in tatters, the principal ornament of his room, and asked
him why the house was thus deserted.

"'Ah, monsieur!' said he, 'do you not feel the sirocco?'

"'Sirocco or not, is this a reason why no one should come when
I call?'

"'Oh, monsieur, when it is sirocco no one does any thing!'

"'And your travellers, who is to wait upon them?'

"'On those days they wait upon themselves.'

"I begged pardon of this respectable official for having
disturbed him; he heaved such a sigh as indicated that it
required a great amount of Christian charity to grant the
pardon I had asked.

"The hour arrived when the doctor should have paid his visit,
and no doctor came. I presumed that the sirocco detained him
also; but as the state of Jadin appeared to me alarming, I
resolved to go and rouse my Esculapius, and bring him, willing
or unwilling, to the hotel. I took my hat and sallied forth.

"Messina had the appearance of a city of the dead: not an
inhabitant was walking in the streets, not a head was seen at
the windows. The mendicants themselves (and he who has not seen
the Sicilian mendicant, knows not what wretchedness is,) lay in
the corners of the streets, stretched out, doubled up, panting,
without strength to stretch out their hand for charity, or
voice to ask an alms. Pompeii, which I visited three months
afterwards, was not more silent, more solitary, more inanimate.

"I reached the doctor's. I rang, I knocked, no one answered. I
pushed against the door, it opened;--I entered, and pursued my
search for the doctor.

"I traversed three or four apartments. There were women lying
upon sofas, and children sprawling on the floor. Not one even
raised a head to look at me. At last, in one of the rooms, the
door of which was, like the rest, half-open, I found the man I
was in quest of, stretched upon his bed.

"I went up to him, I took him by the hand, and felt his pulse.

"'Ah,' said he, with a melancholy voice, and scarcely turning
his head towards me, 'Is that you? What can you want?'

"'Want!--I want you to come and see my friend, who is no
better, as it seems to me.'

"'Go and see your friend!' cried the doctor, in a
fright--'impossible!'

"'Why impossible?'

"He made a desperate effort to move, and taking his cane in his
left hand, passed his right hand slowly down it, from the
golden head that adorned it to the other extremity. 'Look you,'
said he, 'my cane sweats.'

"And, in fact, there fell some globules of water from it, such
an effect has this terrible wind even on inanimate things.

"'Well,' said I, 'and what does that prove?'

"'That proves, that at such a time as this, there are no
physicians, all are patients.[3]'"--P. 175.

[3] The extreme misery of the paupers in Sicily, who form, he
tells us, a tenth part of the population, quite haunts the
imagination of M. Dumas. He recurs to it several times. At one
place he witnesses the distribution, at the door of a convent,
of soup to these poor wretches, and gives a terrible
description of the famine-stricken group. "All these
creatures," he continues, "had eaten nothing since yesterday
evening. They had come there to receive their porringer of
soup, as they had come to-day, as they would come to-morrow.
This was all their nourishment for twenty-four hours, unless
some of them might obtain a few _grani_ from their
fellow-citizens, or the compassion of strangers; but this is
very rare, as the Syracusans are familiarized with the
spectacle, and few strangers visit Syracuse. When the
distributor of this blessed soup appeared, there were
unheard-of cries, and each one rushed forward with his wooden
bowl in his hand. Only there were some too feeble to exclaim,
or to run, and who dragged themselves forward, groaning, upon
their hands and knees. There was in the midst of all, a child
clothed, not in anything that could be called a shirt, but a
kind of spider's web, with a thousand holes, who had no wooden
bowl, and who wept with hunger. It stretched out its poor
little meagre hands, and joined them together, to supply as
well as it could, by this natural receptacle, the absent bowl.
The cook poured in a spoonful of the soup. The soup was
boiling, and burned the child's hand. It uttered a cry of pain,
and was compelled to open its fingers, and the soup fell upon
the pavement. The child threw itself on all fours, and began to
eat in the manner of a dog."--Vol. iii. p. 58.

And in another place he says, "Alas, this cry of hunger! it is
the eternal cry of Sicily; I have heard nothing else for three
months. There are miserable wretches, whose hunger has never
been appeased, from the day when, lying in their cradle, they
began to draw the milk from their exhausted mothers, to the
last hour when, stretched on their bed of death, they have
expired endeavouring to swallow the sacred host which the
priest had laid upon their lips. Horrible to think of! there
are human beings to whom, to have eaten once sufficiently,
would be a remembrance for all their lives to come."--Vol. iv.
p. 108.

Seeing there was no chance of bringing the doctor to the hotel, unless he carried him there by main force, Mr Dumas contented himself with relating the symptoms of his friend. To drink lemonade--much lemonade--all the lemonade he could swallow, was the only prescription that the physician gave. And the simple remedy seems to have sufficed; for the patient shortly after recovered.

Not the least agreeable portion of these travels, is the pleasant impression they leave of the traveller himself, one who has his humours doubtless, but who is social, buoyant, brave, generous, and enterprising. A Frenchman--as a chemist, in his peculiar language, would say--is a creature "endowed with a considerable range of affinity." Our traveller has this range of affinity; he wins the heart of all and several--the crew of his _speronara._ We will close with the following extract, both because it shows the frank and lively feelings of the Frenchman, and because it introduces a name dear to all lovers of melody. The father of Bellini was a Sicilian, and Dumas was in Sicily.

"It was while standing on this spot, that I asked my guide if
he knew the father of Bellini. At this question he turned, and
pointing out to me an old man who was passing in a little
carriage drawn by one horse--'Look you,' said he, 'there he is,
taking his ride into the country!'

"I ran to the carriage and stopped it, knowing that he is never
intrusive who speaks to a father of his son, and of such a son
as Bellini's. At the first mention of his name, the old man
took me by both hands, and asked me eagerly if I really knew
his son. I drew from my portfolio a letter of introduction,
which, on my departure from Paris, Bellini had given me for the
Duchess de Noja, and asked him if he knew the handwriting. He
took the letter in his hands, and answered only by kissing the
superscription.

"'Ah,' said he, turning round to me, 'you know not how good he
is! We are not rich. Well, at each success there comes some
remembrance, something to add to the ease and comfort of an old
man. If you will come home with me, I will show you how many
things I owe to his goodness. Every success brings something
new. This watch I carry with me, was from _Norma_; this little
carriage and horse, from _the Puritans_. In every letter that
he writes, he says that he will come; but Paris is far from
Sicily. I do not trust to this promise--I am afraid that I
shall die without seeing him again. You will see him, you----'

"'Yes,' I answered, 'and if you have any commission----'

"'No--what should I send him?--My blessing?--Dear boy, I give
it him night and morning. But tell him you have given me a
happy day by speaking to me of him--tell him that I embraced
you as an old friend--(and he embraced me)--but you need not
say that I was in tears. Besides,' he added, 'it is with joy
that I weep.--And is it true that my son has a reputation?'

"'Indeed a very great reputation.'

"'How strange!' said the old man, 'who would have thought it,
when I used to scold him, because, instead of working, he would
be eternally beating time, and teaching his sister all the old
Sicilian airs! Well, these things are written above. I wish I
could see him before I die.--But your name?' he added, 'I have
forgotten all this time to ask your name.'

"I told him: it woke no recollection.

"'Alexandre Dumas, Alexandre Dumas,' he repeated two or three
times, 'I shall recollect that he who bears that name has given
me good news of my son. Adieu! Alexandre Dumas--I shall
recollect that name--Adieu!'

"Poor old man! I am sure he has not forgotten it; for the news
I gave him of his son was the last he was ever to receive."--P.
226.

Sicily is one of those _romantic_ countries, where you may still meet with adventures in your travels, where you may be shot at by banditti with pointed hats and long guns. M. Dumas passes not without his share of such adventures. Perhaps, as Sicily is less trodden ground than Italy, his "Souvenirs" will be found more interesting as he proceeds. We have naturally taken our quotations in the order in which they presented themselves, and we have not advanced further than the second of the five delectably small volumes in which these travels are printed. Would our space permit us to proceed, it is probable that our extracts would increase, instead of diminishing, in interest.

* * * * *

AMMALÁT BEK.

A TRUE TALE OF THE CAUCASUS. FROM THE RUSSIAN OF MARLÍNSKI.