abject
fear, vulgar superstition, and utter selfishness reigned supreme. One
case may serve as an example of many others. A fisherman, well known in
the place, a handsome and popular young fellow, was seized, while
working in his boat, with the first symptoms of cholera. He was carried
to his mother's house. The old woman, a villainous-looking hag, watched
the little procession as it approached her dwelling, and taking in the
situation at once, she shut and barricaded her door.

"Santissima Madonna!" she yelled, shrilly, through a half-opened
window. "Leave him in the street, the abandoned, miserable one! The
ungrateful pig! He would bring the plague to his own hard-working,
honest mother! Holy Joseph! who would have children? Leave him in the
street, I tell you!"

It was useless to expostulate with this feminine scarecrow; her son
was, happily for himself, unconscious, and after some more wrangling he
was laid down on her doorstep, where he shortly afterward expired, his
body being afterward carted away like so much rubbish by the beccamorti.

The heat in the city was intense. The sky was a burning dome of
brilliancy, the bay was still as a glittering sheet of glass. A thin
column of smoke issuing from the crater of Vesuvius increased the
impression of an all-pervading, though imperceptible ring of fire, that
seemed to surround the place. No birds sung save in the late evening,
when the nightingales in my gardens broke out in a bubbling torrent of
melody, half joyous, half melancholy. Up on that wooded height where I
dwelt it was comparatively cool. I took all precautions necessary to
prevent the contagion from attacking our household; In fact, I would
have left the neighborhood altogether, had I not known that hasty
flight from an infected district often carries with it the possibility
of closer contact with the disease. My wife, besides, was not
nervous--I think very beautiful women seldom are. Their superb vanity
is an excellent shield to repel pestilence; it does away with the
principal element of danger--fear. As for our Stella, a toddling mite
of two years old, she was a healthy child, for whom neither her mother
nor myself entertained the least anxiety.

Guido Ferrari came and stayed with us, and while the cholera, like a
sharp scythe put into a field of ripe corn, mowed down the dirt-loving
Neapolitans by hundreds, we three, with a small retinue of servants,
none of whom were ever permitted to visit the cit