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Between two edges of lapillus which have formed on the right and left of the rails, among mountains of ashes accumulated here and there in order to free the way, that the trains might get as far as Ottaiano, the little station is crowded with different and strange people. Here are dark faced peasants, silently advancing from the villages where they have been sheltered, and now looking for the little home which once was theirs. Civil functioneers who come here perhaps to try and, doubtless in vain, to rebuild some kind of social life among the ruins of this new Pompei. Small proprietors have climbed up here just through that sad curiosity some people, seem to feel who know they are ruined: rich proprietors of lands and houses, who come to calculate how much of their fortunes has been lost, and consider whether it is worth the while to fight for the future; some weeping woman of the people, a few but rare ladies who have come through a spirit of charity. Many soldiers, many officers, all covered with dust, and not brilliant looking certainly, but fulfilling the most constant and patient duty, a duty always greater and more complex. Here is their general in the midst of a group of persons, who draw close to him, wishing for something, (every body wishes for something), and general Durelli has an answer for everyone, a brief but kind answer. He has a word for everybody, and promises only what he can keep. He is the soul, the breath, the mind, of this new Pompei. I know all this, and I simply bow to him, as I don't want to make him lose any of his precious time. But later when all interrogatories, with every distinguished or obscure person, peasants, gentlemen, poor traders or proprietors of Ottaiano is over, every one declares to me that in this incomparable trouble, in this ruination of the prettiest of towns, the choice of General Durelli, as a reorganiser, could not be better. He occupies one of the few standing houses left inhabited by the parson, and he sleeps there a few hours, and takes his meals, but he is always on his feet, always around, plunging his high boots deep in a meter of lapillus, going to and fro, watching every thing, providing promptly to all with clear and efficacious orders. Around him, groups of bare-footed women, with half naked children in their arms, push and press, while new people coming from the different main roads, arrive, urging him with demands and requests. The women, especially the poorest of them, with sad looking faces relate to him their misfortune, and general Durelli always kind and patient tries to console them and give them what they ask. He begs them to be quiet and wait, hoping for better times.

They draw slowly away, sitting in groups on the ground or on the accumulated ashes, forming thus a strange and never to be forgotten picture. Their clothes are gray with ashes and dust, whilst their babies with smutty faces and hair, lay quietly in their arms, watching eagerly around. They wait there in silence. Perhaps better hours will come.

Under the native roof.

In the long, hard fatiguing pilgrimage where every step costs untold pain, where every look sees a precipice, a young peasant accompanies us as a guide.

One reads trouble and misery in his dark eyes, his voice is low and dragging, almost complaining.

Are you from Ottaiano, I ask him, while going up the steep road.

—Yes, I and my family are from that place.

—Did you run away from there in that terrible night?

—Yes, we fled just about dawn when the fall of stones was at its worst.

—And how long did this last?

—Fully twenty four hours madam, from ten o'clock on Saturday night, till ten o'clock on Palm Sunday.

A whole day, yes, a whole day. He doesn't lie nor exaggerate. If he did, how could all this ruin be around us?

—Did your house fall down? I inquire.

—Yes, he answers sadly. There it stands on that height yonder. Look at it! look at it! All I possessed is buried there! My bed, my poor furniture, all.

Tears gather in his eyes. At least have you saved your family?

—Yes, he murmurs, they are at Sarno. But I have lost all. I was supporting them, and have lost my wagon and my two mules, for I was a driver.

—Are they buried?

—The wagon can be seen under the stones; and as he speaks he seems to take heart all at once, It can be seen! perhaps I shall be able to drag it out. But the mules! The mules are dead. How shall I manage?

A deep sigh heaves his broad chest.

—And you have come back here, I ask him? Many of you have come back?

—I have come back. This is my country. I have come to try to save my wagon and those poor animals, Nothing, nothing!

—Will you remain here?

—I shall! Where could I go? This is my country. I will also make my family return from Sarno. If you knew how many have returned!

—How many? How many?

—At least three thousand. Many have come back the following day. You see, we could not stay away.

—And where do they live?

—Nearly all sleep out in the fields under straw sheds, and the others in the few houses that remain standing now.

—They are building cabins, and little by little you will see every body, coming back to their own country.

—Was this place, fine? I ask him quite touched.

—The finest of all, and our country is fine!

And he utters these words enthusiastically, but again he looks down sighing, and is silent.

Among the ruins.

Of course the farther we get from the station, from Municipio square, the fewer people we see, and the more we advance towards Scudieri's house, Ateneo Chierchia, and the feudal palace of Ottaiano, where the ruins take a more imposing and solemn aspect, the greater the solitude.

But while we stop at every step, to look from the top of the mountains of stones and ashes, on which we climb and descend, while we look at the piled up ceilings, shutters, stones, furniture, pictures, and utensils all in demolition, now and then, we see somebody coming out of a small lane closed by a small gate. Here is an old woman, she looks to be seventy years old, she is thin, wrinkled, but quite straight. I speak to her, I ask her all about that dreadful night.

—I was sleeping, madam, I was sleeping. I woke up and heard screams: "The mountain, the mountain!" Who could believe that a disaster was on us? What was there to be done? I turn entreating God, but I see death coming. My lady! What noise, what darkness, what flashes! The door could not be opened. I just jumped out of the window.

—Out of the window? at your age?

—The window was low and I fell on the ashes. I began to run madly, I don't know where. I protected my head with my arm! Look how wounded it is by a stone falling on me!

And she shows me her fore-arm. It has a long wound, a torn place which is beginning to heal.

—And where did you go?

—Where could I go? Old as I am? In the country towards Somma; there I spent the night. I said, this is the hour of my death! Let your will be done my Lord!

—And you have come back?

—I have come back. What could I do in another country? Who wants an old woman? If I have to die, I want to die here.

Here is a man of the people coming from a street. He bends over a mattress, tucks it up and lays it on a cart which is in a corner, where he has already layed other things.

—Have you found your things again? I ask him.

—I have found some of them, he tells me readily, with a rather excited tone. I am taking these things to Sarno where my wife and children are. They have no place where to sleep. But I am coming back at once. I am a man, I can work. I am coming back day after to-morrow. I want to work here.

—And what will you do?

—What they'll give me to do? Have you seen all those men on the square? They are not from Ottaiano, they are from Marigliano, Pomigliano, and other countries, all people coming here to seek work. They take away the stones and cinders, and ask a great amount of money. Well, this must be done by us, from Ottaiano. Also gratis, even if they don't give us for it but the soldiers' ranch.

The country is ours, the trouble is ours, we must repair it. And he ties with a rope his few things, loads them on the cart with a firm and decided air.

The Babies

Speaking with people, I find that the most touching episodes are those concerning the babies.

How heart-rending the cry and screams must have been of the parents and relatives who were trying to gather them, that they might take them away, lifting in their arms the youngest, tying to their clothes the largest, what a tearing cry must have been heard under the terrible shower of burning stones, lappillus, and ashes! Many of these children, got lost through the country in that dark night, their parents, not finding them, but after three days at long distances, while for three days, they believed them dead and wept desperately over them! The boarders of Ateneo Chierchia ran out helping the younger ones, and carried them on their shoulders wrapped in blankets that they might not be wounded, and in these conditions they fled through the terrible night. The soldiers who had come from Nola during the day gathered a number of other children, and fed them, keeping them with them till the following days, when they could be returned to their parents. As for mothers, in that terrible flight, half wild with despair, they wrapped the little ones in their dresses and shawls thus repairing them from certain death. A poor lady, who had a four months old baby, hid it under her arms, covered it with a basket, and thus carried it for eleven miles, on foot, at night, the baby however quietly sleeping under its shelter. The children of one of the teachers in Ottaiano, took their father who was very ill, closed him in a kind of covered box, and carried him so, on their shoulders till Caserta. The poor man naturally died there of his former trouble, but his children can say that they have saved him from dying under the stones of Ottaiano. Strange to say in this flight of fourteen thousand persons, not one single baby has died, and the people from Ottaiano say, that this is a miracle of the Madonna, a true, real miracle, and every mother clasping her child alive in her arms, has been obliged to believe in this miracle.

A witness.

From the ruins of his beautiful house, from the flowered terrace, covered for one meter with vulcanic stones and cinders, comes Luigi Scudieri, a friend of ours, a witness of the great cataclism. His gay and open expression has not changed, his family is saved, all of them, from his old parents to his children. The palaces of his noble and powerful family have tumbled down one after the other and their rich fabrics, their vast territories are now buried, for many, many years perhaps. Their fortune is compromised, yet he is back here since four or five days, back in Ottaiano, actively busying himself around, advising, guiding, conforting the more desolate, the desperate, helping every one, speaking to every body.

Of course I ask him to tell me all about the destruction of Ottaiano, but notwithstanding his natural brightness, he gets confused and troubled while he speaks.

—Dear Donna Matilde, in the first hours of Saturday night, I must confess, we were not much preoccupied. As you know, we have had several showers of cinders here in Ottaiano, but they were short and harmless. Nothing was to be feared, that evening, as I tell you, but towards mid-night the preoccupation began. The crater had fallen in, and at every breath of the Vulcano, a more and more increasing fall of ashes came down, passing over the mountain of Somma which protects us, and striking the whole of our place. The alarm bells began to ring.

—How terrible! I exclaim.

—It was well they rang the bells he says. The peasants who had all returned home for the holy week, were all fast asleep, the women at the sound of the bells, came out from their houses, running madly away, and to be sure many more would have died had the bells not rung.

—How many died here in Ottaiano?

—About seventy, and even those might have been saved, but the night was so dark and the fall of ashes so thick.

—Did they all seem to lose their mind?

—In the beginning no! I telegraphed to Naples, and the poor telegraph operator who sent my telegram, and whose courage and devotion should be enhanced, sent these telegrams under the flashes of the mountain.

Twice the electric shocks threw her down. One only of my three wires, the one to the Military Comand reached its destination.

—And your family, I ask?

He seems moved and hesitating.

—Don't speak to me about that, he exclaims, those hours have been terrible! When I saw that we had to run away, I was obliged to nearly carry my wife who was ill and weak, on the road. Quite exhausted and discouraged, she stopped to recommend me the children, asking me to let her die there in that very place. I knew nothing about my father and mother; my nephews have saved them, they had sworn to die but to save their grand parents, these brave boys. Only after four days I learned that all my people were saved.

—And where did they all go?

—To Avellino! One would hardly believe it! we reached Avellino by an extra train, and there we received from all the population, and principally from good Achille Vetroni, a warm hospitality.

You can tell it to every body in honour of Vetroni and Avellino. Imagine that in the shops, they refused to be paid, when we went to buy shoes and boots.

Yes, they have really done prodigies of devotion and kindness.

Prodigies! Tell every body what the hospitality of Sarno has been for the people from Ottaiano, how touching! You must also add that the first good example, came from the seminary. The good rector has promptly given up his room to M. Cola, who was flying from Ottaiano, quite ill. The seminarists have distributed their own clothes to the people. One can hardly realize all that has been done for the people of Ottaiano everywhere they have gone, to Sarno, Caserta, Castellammare, Marigliano and Nola. We shall never forget it.

—And what will you do now? I ask him after a brief silence.

—With what? he asks me.

—With Ottaiano.

—Rebuild it all, he answers me, quietly.

—Rebuild it all?

—And what else can we do? We are fourteen thousand. Four thousand have already returned. Where do you want us to go? To Turin? To Milan? It is not possible. Don't you see? Settle in the neighbourhood? At Portici! at Torre Annunziata? We shall always be under the Vesuvius, consequently, in constant danger. Better remain where we are.

But the houses have tumbled down. What then?

The roofs yes, but the walls are not cracked.

We shall have to build the new houses with arched small iron vaults little by little! you will all help us, won't you? How can one abandon one's own country? Here all of us possess much or little land, will you take from us also the hope of redeeming it for our children? What would become of us in Milan, Turin, even in Naples?

How could we hope to build up again, if we went away? But we shall need much help.... I say.... You all must unite with us. And we shall work, and we shall have to make the poor peasants work, and give them prizes for their work, and no alms nor any kind of charity.

Life and hope are still strong in this man who has seen death near him and his people, who has seen his village tumble down, and who is now speaking only of its resurrection.

Vincenza Arpaia

Here near us a woman is speaking eagerly. She is of the peasant type, but a light of intelligence shines in her eyes, and while talking she mixes correct Italian words with her dialect. She has a handkerchief tied on her head, the image of a Saint hangs down on her breast, and she discusses vivaciously.

I interrogate her. I know she has come back here the day after that frightful shower, and has not moved from here ever since. She counts up the houses that are still standing, she speaks of those who have returned and will return. And I learn, that she is the mid-wife of the village, Vincenza Arpaia.

—Have you your diploma, Vincenza, I ask her?

—Of course! I received it at the University of Naples, and I was appointed to this place, she exclaims with pride. Not a single baby is born here, without my assistance.

—All alive!

—All, madam! And thanks to the Lord there are no orphans. What a destruction! But now it is finished, and it will take more than a hundred years before it happens again.—She refers to the terrible fall of stones at Ottaiano, in 1789, she is rather informed, yet she preserves her popular simplicity.

—And why did you return so soon, Vincenza?

—To attend to my work, and see after new born babies, madam.

—New born babies? here?

—One was born the other day, she cries gaily! A fine boy! He was born on the ruins and I shall take him to S. Giovanni, to the only church still standing, and all the bells must be ringing!

This woman of the people says now unconsciously a great and deep thing. A baby was born on the ruins! Oh! eternal resurrection of life!

Oh baby! You are a symbol! life never ends! it renews itself, and it is the eternal bloom of strength and beauty.

April 22, 1906.