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.It had not subsided gradually, but abruptly.Its brow enveloped in a pall of icy clouds, it had suddenly uttered a great cry, and the chill of death had turned its veins of burning lava to stone.The God of Naples, the totem of the Neapolitan populace, was dead.An immense shroud of black crape had descended upon the city, and the bay, and the hill of Possillipo.The people walked about the streets on tip-toe, conversing in low voices, as if every house sheltered a corpse.A doleful silence brooded over the mourning city.The voice of Naples, the ancient, noble voice of hunger, pity, grief, joy and love, the loud, hoarse, resonant, gay, triumphant voice of Naples was stilled.And whenever the fires of sunset, or the silvery radiance of the moon, or the rays of the rising sun appeared to inflame the white spectre of the volcano, a cry, a piercing cry, as of a woman in travail, went up from the city.All the people appeared at the windows, rushed into the streets and embraced one another, shedding tears of joy, intoxicated by the hope that by some miracle warmth had returned to the lifeless veins of the volcano, and that the crimson touch of the setting sun, or the radiance of the moon, or the shy glimmer of dawn, presaged the resurrection of Vesuvius, the dead God whose immense, naked corpse filled the sombre sky of Naples.But soon this hope gave way to rage and disillusionment.Eyes were dried, and the mob, unclasping hands which they had joined in an attitude of prayer, raised threatening fists or cocked a snook at the volcano, mingling entreaties and laments with their imprecations and insults, crying: "Have pity on us, curse you! Son of a harlot, have mercy on us!"Then came the days of the new moon; and when the moon slowly rose above the chill slopes of Vesuvius an oppressive melancholy descended upon Naples.The lunar dawn lit up the lifeless deserts of purple ashes and the livid rocks of cold lava, which looked like boulders of black ice.Sporadic groans and wails arose from the depths of the dark alleys, and the fishermen who lay along the beaches of Santa Lucia, Mergellina and Posillipo, sleeping on the warm sand beneath the keels of their boats, emerged from slumber, raised themselves on to their elbows and turned their heads towards the spectre of the volcano, listening in trepidation to the moaning of the waves and the sporadic sobbing of the seagulls.The shells glistened on the sand, and at the edge of the sky, which was covered with silvery fishes' scales, Vesuvius lay rotting like a dead shark that has been cast ashore by the waves.One August evening, as we were returning from Amain, we saw a long line of reddish flames moving up the volcano's slopes towards the mouth of the crater.We asked a fisherman what these lights were.They came from a procession which was carrying votive offerings to Vesuvius in the hope of allaying its wrath and persuading it not to abandon its people.Following a day of prayer in the Sanctuary of Pompeii a long column of women, boys and old men, headed by a band of priests clad in sacred vestments and by young men carrying the banners and standards of the Brotherhoods and great black crucifixes, was advancing up the highway which leads from Bosco Treccase to the crater.Some were weeping, others were praying.Some were waving olive-sprays, pine-branches, and vine-shoots rich with clusters of grapes.Some carried jars of wine and hampers filled with goat's cheese, fruit and bread, others copper trays laden with buns and whey-tarts, others yet lambs, fowls, rabbits and baskets filled with fish.Having reached the crest of Vesuvius the barefooted, tattered multitude, whose faces and hair were begrimed with ashes, silently followed the chanting priests into the vast amphitheatre of the old crater.The russet moon climbed above the distant mountains of Cilento, which appeared blue and silver in the green mirror of the sky.The night was deep and warm.Here and there the sound of weeping arose from the mob, and stifled groans, loud, harsh cries, and voices hoarse with fear and grief.Every so often one would sink to his knees and poke his fingers into the cracks in the cold lava-crust as if probing the fissures in the marble flagstones of a tomb, in order to feel whether the ancient fire still burned in the veins of the volcano; then, withdrawing his hand, he would cry in a voice broken with anguish and horror: "He's dead! He's dead!"At the words a great wail would go up from the mob, accompanied by the thumping of fists on breasts and bellies and the shrill groans of the faithful as they mortified their flesh with their nails and teeth.The old crater is in the form of a shell almost a mile across.Its jagged rim is black with lava and yellow with sulphur.Here and there the deposits of lava, after cooling off, have taken on human shapes, the aspect of gigantic men, intertwined like wrestlers in a dark, silent affray.These are the lava statues which the inhabitants of the Vesuvian villages call "the slaves," perhaps in memory of the hordes of slaves who had followed Spartacus and, while they awaited the signal to revolt, had lived in hiding for many months among the vineyards which covered the slopes and summit of peaceful Vesuvius before the sudden eruption that destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii.The moon awoke that army of slaves, who slowly loosed themselves from sleep and, raising their arms, moved through the red mist of the moon towards the crowd of the faithful.In the middle of the vast amphitheatre of the old crater rises the cone of the new, which, now mute and cold, had continued for nearly two thousand years to spew up flames, ashes, stones, and rivers of lava.Clambering up the rugged slopes of the cone the mob had collected around the mouth of the extinct volcano and, weeping and shouting, were flinging their votive offerings—bread, fruit and whey-tarts—into the monster's black jaws, while over the lava rocks they sprinkled wine and the blood of the lambs, fowls and rabbits whose throats they had cut and which they afterwards threw, still quivering with life, into the depths of the abyss.Jimmy and I had reached the summit of Vesuvius just as the mob, having performed that most ancient propitiatory rite, had thrown themselves to their knees and, tearing their hair and clawing their faces and breasts, were mingling liturgical chants and lamentations with prayers to the miraculous Virgin of Pompeii and invocations of their cruel and unfeeling god Vesuvius.As the moon, like a blood-soaked sponge, climbed into the sky, so the tone of the wails and litanies was raised and the voices became shriller and more heart-rending, until the mob, seized with a wild, despairing fury and hurling imprecations and insults, began to fling pieces of lava and handfuls of ashes into the mouth of the volcano.Meanwhile a great wind had arisen, and a dense mass of clouds, accompanied by flashes of lightning, was emerging from the sea, propelled by the sirocco.Very soon it enveloped the crest of Vesuvius.Amid those yellow clouds, riven by the thunderbolts, the great black crucifixes and the banners, which the gusts of wind buffeted unmercifully, appeared enormous, and the men looked like giants.The litanies, the imprecations and the wails of the mob seemed to well up from the smoke and flames of an inferno which had suddenly opened up beneath it.At length, first the band of priests, then the standard-bearers of the Brotherhoods, and finally the crowd of the faithful rushed headlong down the sides of the cone, beneath the rain that was already hissing down through the rents in the clouds, and disappeared into the sulphurous darkness which had meanwhile invaded the vast shell of the old crater [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]