imply in the full sunshine and bearing aloft images of the
Madonna or saints, clad in gorgeous robes of cheap blue or yellow
satin. Their joy was suddenly changed to grief by tidings of a frightful
disaster. The roof of the Monte Oliveto market, fronting on the Toledo,
the main thoroughfare, had suddenly crushed in, burying more than 200
people beneath its heavy fall.

The market had been crowded with buyers and their children, and it was
the busiest hours of the day in the great roofed courtyard, covering a
space 600 feet square, when, with scarcely a tremor of warning, there
came a frightful crash and a dense cloud of dust covered the scene, from
out of which came heartrending screams of agony. The volcanic ash which,
unnoticed, had gathered thickly on the roof, had broken it in by its
weight.

The news set the people frantic with grief and indignation. They
insisted that the authorities knew that the roof was unsafe and had
neglected their duty. Cursing and screaming in their intense excitement,
they surrounded the market, endeavoring with frantic haste to remove the
heavy beams from beneath which came the appealing calls for help, many
of the rescuers sobbing aloud as they worked. It required a large force
of police and soldiers to keep them back and permit the firemen and
other trained workers to carry on more systematically the work of
relief. Twelve persons proved to have been killed, two fatally injured,
twenty-four seriously hurt and over a hundred badly bruised and cut.
Among these were many children, whose parents had sent them to do the
marketing without a dream of danger, and the grief of the parents was
intense. The Duke of Aosta, Prefect of Naples, directed the work of
rescue, while his wife assisted in the care of the injured. As the
Duchess bent in the hospital to give a cooling drink to a badly bruised
little girl she felt a kiss upon her hand. Looking down, she saw a woman
kneeling at her feet, who gratefully said: "Your Excellency, she is all
I have. I am a widow. May God reward you."

While this scene of horror was taking place in Naples the fate of the
town and villages grouped around the foot of the volcano seemed as
hopeless as ever. Early on the 10th the showers of ashes and streams
of lava diminished and almost ceased, but later the same day they began
again, and the terrified inhabitants feared that a catastrophe like that
which buried Pompeii and Herculaneum was about to visit them. The lav