CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE

BY ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

IN EIGHT VOLUMES

NISIDA--1825

If our readers, tempted by the Italian proverb about seeing Naples
and then dying, were to ask us what is the most favourable moment for
visiting the enchanted city, we should advise them to land at the mole,
or at Mergellina, on a fine summer day and at the hour when some solemn
procession is moving out of the cathedral. Nothing can give an idea
of the profound and simple-hearted emotion of this populace, which has
enough poetry in its soul to believe in its own happiness. The whole
town adorns herself and attires herself like a bride for her wedding;
the dark facades of marble and granite disappear beneath hangings of
silk and festoons of flowers; the wealthy display their dazzling luxury,
the poor drape themselves proudly in their rags. Everything is light,
harmony, and perfume; the sound is like the hum of an immense hive,
interrupted by a thousandfold outcry of joy impossible to describe. The
bells repeat their sonorous sequences in every key; the arcades echo
afar with the triumphal marches of military bands; the sellers of
sherbet and water-melons sing out their deafening flourish from throats
of copper. People form into groups; they meet, question, gesticulate;
there are gleaming looks, eloquent gestures, picturesque attitudes;
there is a general animation, an unknown charm, an indefinable
intoxication. Earth is very near to heaven, and it is easy to understand
that, if God were to banish death from this delightful spot, the
Neapolitans would desire no other paradise.

The story that we are about to tell opens with one of these magical
pictures. It was the Day of the Assumption in the year 1825; the sun had
been up some four or five hours, and the long Via da Forcella, lighted
from end to end by its slanting rays, cut the town in two, like a ribbon
of watered silk. The lava pavement, carefully cleaned, shone like any
mosaic, and the royal troops, with their proudly waving plumes, made a
double living hedge on each side of the street. The balconies, windows,
and terraces, the stands with their unsubstantial balustrades, and the
wooden galleries set up during the night, were loaded with spectators,
and looked not unlike the boxes of a theatre. An immense crowd, forming
a medley of the brightest colours, invaded the reserved space and broke
through the military barriers, here and there, like an overflowing
tor