Vagaries Part 10

"Consolatrix miserorum, Suscitatrix mortuorum, Mortis rumpe retia; Intendentes tuae laudi, Nos attende, nos exaudi, Nos a morte libera!"

He lifted the curtain before the door, and in the light of the little oil-lamp he saw Don Dionisio on his knees before the image of his Madonna, very busy brushing the cobwebs off an enormous old wig of an indescribable colour. His anger had not yet subsided. "_Dicono che non tiene capelli!_" he called out as soon as he caught sight of the doctor; "_mo vogliamo vedere chi tieni i piu belli capelli!_"[37] And with a triumphant glance at his visitor he placed the wig upon the bald head of La Madonna del Buon Cammino. "_Come e bella, come e simpatica!_" said he, with sparkling eyes, and he arranged as well as he could the entangled curls round the forehead of the image.

When the doctor went away Don Dionisio's anger had cooled, and again he took up his position in the little portico in excellent spirits, quite ready to fight both on the offensive and defensive for his Madonna's sake. The same evening the doctor was told of a case of cholera in a _fondaco_ close by the street in which Don Dionisio lived, and he went to look at it early the next morning. In pa.s.sing by he saw the old fellow already at his post, rubbing his hands and looking very cheerful, and the doctor had not the heart to tell him then that even the protecting presence of his Madonna had now failed. But Don Dionisio waved his hand eagerly as soon as he caught sight of the doctor, and when he was still some distance he called out, so as to be heard throughout the whole lane, "_Ecco il colera!_ See now what I have always said! Here you have got it because you would not believe in La Madonna del Buon Cammino; now you are all of you going to see what becomes of those who believe more in the Madonna del Carmine than in her! _Ecco il colera!_ in our very midst, _Ecco il colera!_"

The lane was full of people, who in trembling terror had fled out of their houses to pray in the churches and before the shrines at the street corners, and some of them stopped irresolutely in front of the chapel to listen to Don Dionisio's threatening prophecy of death to every one who had dared to brave the anger of the blessed Madonna del Buon Cammino. The _fondaco_ seemed quite empty, for as many as were able had run away at the first alarm; but, guided by the sound of praying voices, the doctor came at last to a dark hole, where the usual sight met his eyes. Round the door some kneeling _commare_[38] in earnest prayer; stretched out at full length upon the floor a mother wringing her hands in despair; and in a corner the livid face of a child, half-hidden under a heap of ragged coverings. The little girl was quite cold, her eyelids half shut, and her pulse scarcely perceptible.

Now and again a convulsive trembling pa.s.sed over her; but except for that she lay there quite motionless and insensible--cholera! At the head of the bed lay a picture of the Madonna del Carmine, and the doctor gathered from the muttering of the women that the wonder-working Madonna had been brought there the evening before. Now and then the mother lifted her head and looked searchingly at the doctor, and it seemed to him as if he could read something like confidence in her anguished eyes.

And yet it appeared as if he could do nothing. Ether-injections, frictions, all the usual remedies proved fruitless to bring the warmth of life back, and the pulse grew weaker and weaker. Again the doctor saw to his surprise the same trusting expression in the mother's eyes when she looked at him, and he determined to try his new remedy. He knew well that in a case like this there was nothing to lose, for left to herself the child was evidently dying; but for some time he had been pursued by a wild idea that maybe there was everything still to gain. No one cared any longer to watch what he did; the mother lay with her forehead pressed against the floor, calling upon the Madonna with touching voice to take her own life in exchange for the child's; and amongst the _commare_ the prayers had ceased and in their place a lively discussion broken out as to whether it would not be better to fetch some other Madonna, since the Madonna del Carmine would not help them in spite of all their prayers, in spite of the candles before her image, in spite of the mother's promise to dress the child in the Madonna's colour for a whole year, if only it might live. The child was quite insensible, and everything was easily done. When all was finished the doctor slightly touched the mother's shoulder, and whilst she stared at him, as if she hardly understood his words, he said that there was no time to lose if they wished to fetch another Madonna, and he suggested that they should send for the holy Madonna del Buon Cammino, whose chapel was close by. A deep silence followed his words, and it was plain that his suggestion did not meet with the smallest sympathy. He pretended to take their silence for consent, and with a little difficulty succeeded in persuading one of the women, whom he knew well, to go to the chapel of the Madonna del Buon Cammino.

Don Dionisio came like a shot with his Madonna in his arms. He put the little oil-lamp at the feet of the image, and began eagerly to sing the hymn to the honour of his Madonna, now and then casting a furious glance at the image of her powerful rival, before which the mother still lay outstretched; whilst by the door the women were muttering all sorts of opprobrious remarks about his idol: "_Vatene farti un'altra gonnella, poverella! Benedetto San Gennaro, che brutta faccia che l'hanno dato, povera vecchia!_"[39]

Suddenly they became quite silent, and in breathless amazement they all stared at the doctor's pale waxen a.s.sistant in his fight for the child's life. For from the closely compressed lips of the dying girl a subdued moan was heard, and the half-opened eyes turned slowly towards the Madonna del Buon Cammino. All crossed themselves repeatedly; and the doctor perceived the child's pulse grow stronger, and the warmth of life slowly begin to spread over the icy limbs. The terror of death began to glow in her eyes, and she cried with half-broken voice: "_Salvatemi!

Salvatemi! Madonna Sanctissima!_"[40]

With a louder voice Don Dionis...o...b..gan again his song of praise, and all round him now murmured the name of the blessed Madonna del Buon Cammino.

Don Dionisio left the _fondaco_ about an hour afterwards, followed by a procession of almost all its inhabitants. The child was then quite conscious; and all agreed that the holy Madonna del Buon Cammino had worked a miracle.

The doctor sat for a good while longer at the child's side, watching with the keenest interest the slow but sure return of its strength. Late in the evening, when he looked in again, the improvement was so marked that it was probable the child would live. Everywhere--in the _fondaco_ and in the alleys around--nothing was talked of but the new miracle; and when the doctor went home he saw for the first time lights shining in the chapel of the Madonna del Buon Cammino.

He did not sleep a wink that night, for he could not keep his thoughts away from what he had witnessed in the morning, and he could hardly restrain his impatience to meet with a fresh case on which to repeat the experiment.

He had not to wait long. The same night another woman in the _fondaco_ was attacked, and when he saw her the next day she was already so bad that it seemed as if she might die at any moment. His advice to fetch the Madonna del Buon Cammino was taken now without hesitation, and whilst everybody's attention was fixed upon Don Dionisio and his image, the doctor could busy himself with his patient, undisturbed by any suspicious and troublesome eyes.

Here again a speedy and decided reaction set in, which became more and more confirmed during the day; and that same evening the rumour spread through the alleys of the Mercato of a second miracle by the wonder-working Madonna del Buon Cammino.

Thus began those strange never-to-be-forgotten days, when, insensible to fatigue, yes! to hunger, the doctor went day and night from bed to bed, borne as by strong wings of an idea which almost blinded his sight, and made all his scepticism waver. He would come with Don Dionisio at his heels to meet the usual sight of some poor half-dead creature for whom it seemed as if human skill could do nothing, and when, an hour or two later, the Madonna del Buon Cammino was carried away in solemn procession, followed by the deepest devotion of the crowd, he would slip out unnoticed, forgetful of everything, in silent wonder at the sudden and constant improvement he had witnessed--an improvement which often seemed like a rising from the dead.

Ah! he had gone down there where it had seemed to him so easy to die, just as easy as it had been to delude himself with the thought that he had gone there only to help others. He had done very little for others, but a good deal for himself--he had almost forgotten his own misery. His experience of cholera was already wide enough, he knew about as much as others knew. He knew that fate reigns over death as over life. Method after method he had tried honestly and conscientiously, and he had learnt that in spite of Koch, in spite of the microbes, his ignorance was as great as ever when it came to the treatment of a cholera patient.

So he had wandered round the quarters of Naples with remedies in his hands in which he did not believe himself, and words of encouragement and confidence on his lips, but hopeless scepticism in his heart.

And now this last experiment, so bold that he had almost shrunk from trying it, which had resulted in an unbroken series of successes in the midst of an epidemic with an enormous mortality! Once again he was a doctor and nothing more. With redoubled zeal he followed every case, scarcely for a minute did he leave his patient's side, and with increasing excitement he watched every symptom, every detail, with his former scepticism--and yet the fact remained, for a whole week not a single fatal case!

He had almost forgotten that Don Dionisio and the Madonna del Buon Cammino followed his footsteps--he had forgotten them as he had forgotten himself. Now and then his vacant eyes would fall upon the unconscious a.s.sistant at his side, and he felt glad that he had been able to give the old man a share in his success. Don Dionisio seemed to need no more rest than the doctor, day and night he was going about with his Madonna. His face shone with ecstasy, and he enjoyed to the full his short happiness.

The Madonna del Buon Cammino was now clothed in a flame-coloured silken mantle, a diadem of showy gla.s.s beads encircled her brow, and round her neck, strung upon a cord, hung numbers of rings and gold ear-rings.

Night and day votive candles were lighted in her chapel, and on the walls, so naked before, hung _ex votos_ of all possible kinds, thank-offerings for deliverance from sickness and death. The chapel was always full of people, praying fervently on their knees for help from that mighty Madonna who had performed so many miracles, and who stretched out her protecting hand over the street. For, to his amazement, the doctor had heard Don Dionisio prophesy that as long as the lights burned in the chapel of the Madonna del Buon Cammino, the cholera would never dare to approach her street.

It was now that the poor people of Naples were to suffer their deepest misery, that the infection, swift as fire, broke out all over the alleys and slums of the four poor quarters. It was now that people fell down in the street as if they had been struck by lightning; that the dying and dead lay side by side in almost every house; that the omnibuses of Portici, filled with the day's death-harvest, were driven every evening up to the Campo Santo dei Colerosi,[41] where over a thousand corpses every night filled the enormous grave. It was now that trembling hands broke down the walls with which modern times had hidden the old shrines at the street corners, that the people in wild fury stormed the Duomo to force the priests to carry San Gennaro himself down to their alleys. It was now that anxiety reached the borders of frenzy, that despair began to howl like rage, that from trembling lips prayers and curses fell in alternating confusion, that knives gleamed in hands which just before had convulsively grasped rosary and crucifix.

The doctor and his friend went on their way as before, undisturbed by the increasing terrors which surrounded them. And wherever they went Death gave way before them. The doctor needed all his self-control to enable him still to maintain his doubts, and before his eyes he saw like a mirage the goal which his daring dreams already reached. As for Don Dionisio, no questioning doubt had ever awakened his slumbering freedom of thought, and long ago the doctor had given up all attempts to restrain the old fellow's joyous conviction of his victory.

The epidemic had now reached its highest point, almost every house in the quarter was infected, and still Don Dionisio's prophecy held good, for not a single case had occurred in the street of the Madonna del Buon Cammino.

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