By Gabriele D’Annunzio
I
When the first confused clamour of the rebellion reached Don Filippo Cassaura, he suddenly opened his eyelids, that weighed heavily upon his eyes, inflamed around the upturned lids, like those of pirates who sail through stormy seas.
“Did you hear?” he asked of Mazzagrogna, who was standing nearby, while the trembling of his voice betrayed his inward fear.
The majordomo answered, smiling, “Do not be afraid, Your Excellency. Today is St. Peter’s day. The mowers are singing.”
The old man remained listening, leaning on his elbow and looking over the balcony. The hot south wind was fluttering the curtains. The swallows, in flocks, were darting back and forth as rapidly as arrows through the burning air. All the roofs of the houses below glared with reddish and greyish tints. Beyond the roofs was extended the vast, rich country, gold in colour, like ripened wheat.
Again the old man asked, “But Giovanni, have you heard?”
And indeed, clamours, which did not seem to indicate joy, reached their ears. The wind, rendering them louder at intervals, pushing them and intermingling with its whistling noise, made them appear still more strange.
“Do not mind that, Your Excellency,” answered Mazzagrogna. “Your ears deceive you.”
“Keep quiet.” And he arose to go towards one of the balconies.
He was a thick-set man, bow-legged, with enormous hands, covered with hair on the backs like a beast. His eyes were oblique and white, like those of the Albinos. His face was covered with freckles. A few red hairs straggled upon his temples and the bald top of his head was flecked with dark projections in the shape of chestnuts.
He remained standing for a while, between the two curtains, inflated like sails, in order to watch the plain beneath. Thick clouds of dust, rising from the road of the Fara, as after the passing of immense flocks of sheep, were swept by the wind and grew into shapes of cyclones. From time to time these whirling clouds caused whistling sounds, as if they encompassed armed people.
“Well?” asked Don Filippo, uneasily.
“Nothing,” repeated Mazzagrogna, but his brows were contracted.
Again the impetuous rush of wind brought a tumult of distant cries.
One of the curtains, blown by the wind, began to flutter and wave in the air like an inflated flag. A door was suddenly shut with violence and noise, the glass panel trembled from the shock. The papers, accumulated upon the table, were scattered around the room.
“Do close it! Do close it!” cried the old man, with emotional terror.
“Where is my son?”
He was lying upon the bed, suffocated by his fleshiness, and unable to rise, as all the lower part of his body was deadened by paralysis. A continuous paralytic tremor agitated his muscles. His hands, lying on the bed sheets, were contorted, like the roots of old olive trees. A copious perspiration dripped from his forehead and from his bald head, and dropped from his large face, which had a pinkish, faded colour, like the gall of oxen.
“Heavens!” murmured Mazzagrogna, between his teeth, as he closed the shutters vehemently. “They are in earnest!”
One could now perceive upon this road of Fara, near the first house, a multitude of men, excited and wavering, like the overflow of rivulets, which indicated a still greater multitude of people, invisible, hidden by the rows of roofs and by the oak trees of San Pio. The auxiliary legion of the country had met the one of the rebellion. Little by little the crowd would diminish, entering the roads of the country and disappearing like an army of ants through the labyrinth of the ant hill.
The suffocated cries, echoing from house to house, reached them now, like a continuous but indistinct rumbling. At moments there was silence and then you could hear the great fluttering of the ash trees in front of the palace, which seemed as if already abandoned.
“My son! Where is he?” again asked the old man, in a quivering, squeaking voice. “Call him! I wish to see him.”
He trembled upon his bed, not only because he was a paralytic, but also because of fear.
At the time of the first seditious movement of the day before, at the cries of about a hundred youths, who had come under the balcony to shout against the latest extortions of the Duke of Ofena, he had been overcome by such a foolish fright, that he had wept like a little girl, and had spent the night invoking the Saints of Paradise. The thought of death and of his danger gave rise to an indescribable terror in that paralytic old man, already half dead, in whom the last breaths of life were so painful. He did not wish to die.
“Luigi! Luigi!” he began to cry in his anguish.
All the place was filled with the sharp rattling of the window glasses, caused by the rush of the wind. From time to time one could hear the banging of a door, and the sound of precipitate steps and sharp cries.
“Luigi!”
II.
The Duke ran up. He was somewhat pale and excited, although endeavouring to control himself. He was tall and robust, his beard still black on his heavy jaws. From his mouth, full and imperious, came forth explosive outbursts; his voracious eyes were troubled; his strong nose, covered with red spots, quivered.
“Well, then?” asked Don Filippo, breathlessly, with a rattling sound, as though suffocated.
“Do not fear, father, I am here,” answered the Duke, approaching the bed and trying to smile.
Mazzagrogna was standing in front of one of the balconies, looking out attentively. No cries reached them now and no one was to be seen.
The sun, gradually descending in the clear sky, was like a rosy circle of flames, enlarging and glaring over the hill-tops. All the country around seemed to burn and the southwest wind resembled a breath from the fire. The first quarter of the moon arose through the groves of Lisci. Poggio, Revelli, Ricciano, Rocca of Forca, were seen through the window panes, revealed by distant flashes of lightning, and from time to time the sound of bells could be heard. A few incendiary fires began to glow here and there. The heat was suffocating.
“This,” said the Duke of Ofena, in his hoarse, harsh voice, “comes from Scioli, but——”
He made a menacing gesture, then he approached Mazzagrogna.
He felt uneasy, because Carletto Grua could not yet be seen. He paced up and down the hall with a heavy step. He then detached from a hook two long, old-fashioned pistols, examining them carefully. The father followed his every movement with dilated eyes, breathing heavily, like a calf in agony, and now and then he shook the bed cover with his deformed hands. He asked two or three times of Mazzagrogna, “What can you see?”
Suddenly Mazzagrogna exclaimed, “Here comes Carletto, running with Gennaro.”
You could hear, in fact, the furious blows upon the large gate. Soon after, Carletto and the servant entered the room, pale, frightened, stained with blood and covered with dust.
The Duke, on perceiving Carletto, uttered a cry. He took him in his arms and began to feel him all over his body, to find the wounds.
“What have they done to you? What have they done to you? Tell me!”
The youth was weeping like a girl.
“There,” said he, between his sobs. He lowered his head and pointed on the top, to some bunches of hair, sticking together with congealed blood.
The Duke passed his fingers softly through the hair to discover the wounds. He loved Carletto Grua, and had for him a lover’s solicitude.
“Does it hurt you?” he asked.
The youth sobbed more vehemently. He was slender, like a girl, with an effeminate face, hardly shaded by an incipient blond beard, his hair was rather long, he had a beautiful mouth, and the sharp voice of an eunuch. He was an orphan, the son of a confectioner of Benevento. He acted as valet to the Duke.
“Now they are coming,” he said, his whole frame trembling, turning his eyes, filled with tears, towards the balcony, from which came the clamours, louder and more terrible.
The servant, who had a deep wound upon his shoulder, and his arm up to the elbow all stained with blood, was telling falteringly how they had both been overtaken by the maddened mob, when Mazzagrogna, who had remained watching, cried out, “Here they are! They are coming to the palace. They are armed!”
Don Luigi, leaving Carletto, ran to look out.
III.
In truth, a multitude of people, rushing up the wide incline with such united fury, shouting and shaking their weapons and their tools, did not resemble a gathering of individuals, but rather the overflow of a blind mass of matter, urged on by an irresistible force.
In a few moments, the mob was beneath the palace, stretching around it like an octopus, with many arms, and enclosing the whole edifice in a surging circle.
Some among the rebels carried large bunches of lighted sticks, like torches, casting over their faces a mobile, reddish light and scattering sparks and burning cinders, which caused noisy, crackling sounds. Some, in a compact group, were carrying a pole, from the top of which hung the corpse of a man. They were threatening death, with gestures and cries. With hatred they were shouting the name, “Cassaura! Cassaura!”
The Duke of Ofena threw up his hands in despair upon recognising on the top of the pole the mutilated body of Vincenzio Murro, the messenger he had sent during the night to ask for help from the soldiers. He pointed out the hanging body to Mazzagrogna, who said, in a low voice, “It is the end!”
Don Filippo, however, heard him, and began to give forth such a rattling sound that they all felt their hearts oppressed and their courage failing them.
The servants, with pale faces, ran to the threshold, and were held there by cowardice. Some were crying and invoking their Saints, while others were contemplating treachery. “If we should give up our master to the people, they might, perhaps, spare our lives.”
“To the balcony! To the balcony!” cried the people, breaking in. “To the balcony!”
At this moment, the Duke spoke aside, in a subdued voice, to Mazzagrogna.
Turning to Don Filippo, he said, “Place yourself in a chair, father; it will be better for you.”
A slight murmur arose among the servants. Two of them came forward to help the paralytic to get out of bed. Two others stood near the chair, which ran on rollers. The work was painful.
The corpulent old man was panting and lamenting loudly, his arm clinging to the neck of the servant who supported him. He was dripping with perspiration, while the room, the shutters being closed, was filled with an unbearable stench. When he reached the chair, his feet began to tap on the floor with a rhythmical motion. His loose stomach hung on his knees, like a half filled leather bag.
Then the Duke said to Mazzagrogna, “Giovanni, it is your turn!”
And the latter, with a resolute gesture, opened the shutters and went out onto the balcony.
IV.
A sonorous shouting greeted him. Five, ten, twenty bundles of lighted sticks were simultaneously thrust beneath the place where he was standing. The glare illuminated the animated faces, eager for carnage, the steel of the guns, the iron axes. The faces of the torch-bearers were sprinkled with flour, as a protection from the sparks, and in the midst of their whitened faces their reddish eyes shone singularly. The black smoke arose in the air, fading away rapidly. The flames whistled and, stretching up on one side, were blown by the wind like infernal hair. The thinnest and dryest reeds bent over quickly, reddening, breaking down and cracking like sky-rockets. It was a gay sight.
“Mazzagrogna! Mazzagrogna! To death with the seducer! To death with the crooked man!” they all cried, crowding together to throw insults at him.
Mazzagrogna stretched out his hands, as though to subdue the clamour; he gathered together all his vocal force and began, in the name of the king, as if promulgating a law to infuse respect into the people.
“In the name of His Majesty, Ferdinando II, and by the grace of God, King of both Sicilies, of Jerusalem——”
“To death with the thief!”
Two or three shots resounded among the cries, and the speaker, struck on his chest and on his forehead, staggered, throwing his hands above his head and falling downward. Upon falling, his head stuck between two of the spikes of the iron railing and hung over the edge like a pumpkin. The blood began to drip down upon the soil beneath.
This spectacle rejoiced the people. The uproar arose to the stars. Then the bearer of the pole holding the hanging corpse came under the balcony and held the body of Vincenzio Murro near to that of the majordomo. The pole was wavering in the air and the people, dumbfounded, watched as the two bodies jolted together. An improvised poet, alluding to the Albino-like eyes of Mazzagrogna and to the bleared ones of the messenger, shouted these lines:
“Lean over the window, you fried eyes,
That you may look upon the open skies!”
A great outburst of laughter greeted the jest of the poet and the laughter spread from mouth to mouth like the sound of water falling down a stony valley.
A rival poet shouted:
“Look, what a blind man can see!
If he closes his eyes and tries to flee.”
The laughter was renewed.
A third one cried out:
“Oh, face of a dead brute!
Your crazy hair stands resolute!”
Many more imprecations were cast at Mazzagrogna. A ferocious joy had invaded the hearts of the people. The sight and smell of blood intoxicated those nearest. Tomaso of Beffi and Rocco Fuici challenged each other to hit with a stone the hanging head of the dead man, which was still warm, and at every blow moved and shed blood. A stone, thrown by Rocco Fuici, at last, hit it in the centre, causing a hollow sound. The spectators applauded, but they had had enough of Mazzagrogna.
Again a cry arose, “Cassaura! Cassaura! To death! To death!”
Fabrizio and Ferdinandino Scioli, pushing their way through the crowd, were instigating the most zealous ones. A terrible shower of stones, like a dense hailstorm, mingled with gun-shots, beat against the windows of the palace, the window panes falling upon the assailing hoards and the stones rebounding. A few of the bystanders were hurt.
When they were through with the stones and had used all their bullets, Ferdinandino Scioli cried out, “Down with the doors!”
And the cry, repeated from mouth to mouth, shook every hope of salvation out of the Duke of Ofena.
V.
No one had dared to close the balcony, where Mazzagrogna had fallen. His corpse was lying in a contorted position. Then the rebels, in order to be freer, had left the pole, holding the bleeding body of the messenger, leaning against the balcony. Some of his limbs had been cut off with a hatchet, and the body could be seen through the curtains as they were inflated by the wind. The evening was still. The stars scintillated endlessly. A few stubble fields were burning in the distance.
Upon hearing the blows against the door the Duke of Ofena wished to try another experiment.
Don Filippo, stupefied with terror, kept his eyes closed and was speechless. Carletto Grua, his head bandaged, doubled up in the corner, his teeth chattering with fever and fear, watched with his eyes sticking out of their orbits, every gesture, every motion of his master. The servants had found refuge in the garrets. A few of them still remained in the adjoining rooms.
Don Luigi gathered them together, reanimated their courage and rearmed them with pistols and guns, and then assigned to each one his place under the parapets of the windows, and between the shutters of the balcony. Each one had to shoot upon the rebels with the greatest possible celerity, silently, without exposing himself.
“Forward!”
The firing began. Don Luigi was placing his hopes in a panic. He was untiringly discharging his long-range pistols with most marvellous energy. As the multitude was dense, no shot went astray. The cries arising after every discharge excited the servants and increased their ardour. Already disorder invaded the mutineers. A great many were running away, leaving the wounded on the ground.
Then a cry of victory arose from the group of the domestics.
“Long live the Duke of Ofena!” These cowardly men were growing brave, as they beheld the backs of their enemy. They no longer remained hidden, no longer shot at haphazard, but, having risen to their feet, were aiming at the people. And every time they saw a man fall, would cry, “Long live the Duke!”
Within a short time the palace was freed from the siege. All around the wounded ones lay, groaning. The residue of the sticks, which were still burning over the ground and crackling as they died out, cast upon the bodies uncertain flashes of light reflected in the pools of blood. The wind had grown, striking the old oaks with a creeping sound. The barking of dogs, answering one another, resounded throughout the valley.
Intoxicated by their victory and broken down with fatigue, the domestics went downstairs to partake of some refreshments. They were all unhurt. They drank freely and abundantly. Some of them announced the names of those they had struck, and described the way they had fallen. The cook was boasting of having killed the terrible Rocco Furci; and as they became excited by the wine the boasting increased.
VI.
Now, while the Duke of Ofena feeling safe, for at least that night, from any danger, was attending the whining Carletto, a glare of light from the south was reflected in the mirror, and new clamours arose through the gusts of the south wind beneath the palace. At the same time four or five servants appeared, who, while sleeping, intoxicated, in the rooms below, had been almost suffocated by the smoke. They had not yet recovered their senses, staggering, being unable to talk, as their tongues were thick with drink. Others came running up, shouting:
“Fire! Fire!”
They were trembling, leaning against one another like a herd of sheep. Their native cowardice had again overtaken them. All their senses were dull as in a dream. They did not know what they ought to do, nor did the consciousness of real danger urge them to use a ruse as a means of escape.
Taken very much by surprise the Duke was at first perplexed. But Carletto Grua, noticing the smoke coming in, and hearing that singular roar which the flames make by feeding themselves, began to cry so loudly, and to make such maddened gestures, that Don Filippo awoke from the half drowsiness into which he had fallen, on beholding death.
Death was unavoidable. The fire, owing to the strong wind, was spreading with stupendous speed through the whole edifice, devouring everything in flames. These flames ran up the walls, hugging the tapestries, hesitating an instant over the edge of the cloth, with clear and changeable yet vague tints penetrating through the weave, with a thousand thin, vibrating tongues, seeming to animate, in an instant, the mural figures, with a certain spirit, by lighting up for a second a smile never before seen upon the mouths of the nymphs and the Goddess, by changing in an instant their attitudes and their motionless gestures.
Passing on, in their still increasing flight, they would wrap themselves around the wooden carvings, preserving to the last their shapes, as though to make them appear to be manufactured of fiery substance when they were suddenly consumed, turning to Cinders, as if by magic. The voices of the flames were forming a vast choir, a profound harmony, like the rustling of millions of weeds. At intervals, through the roaring openings, appeared the pure sky with its galaxy of stars.
Now the entire palace was a prey of the fire.
“Save me! Save me!” cried the old man, attempting in vain to get up, already feeling the floor sinking beneath him, and almost blinded by the implacable reddish glare.
“Save me! Save me!”
With a supreme effort he succeeded in rising and began to run, the trunk of his body leaning forward, moving with little hopping steps, as if pushed by an irresistible progressive impulse, waving his shapeless hands, until he fell overpowered—the victim of the fire—collapsing and curling up like an empty bladder.
By this time the cries of the people increased and at intervals arose above the roar of the fire. The servants, crazed with terror and pain, jumped out of the windows, falling upon the ground dead, where if not entirely dead they were instantly killed. With every fall a greater clamour arose.
“The Duke! The Duke!” the unsatisfied barbarians were crying as if they wanted to see the little tyrant jump out with his cowardly protégé.
“Here he comes! Here he comes! Is it he?”
“Down! down! We want you!”
“Die, you dog! Die! Die! Die!”
In the large doorway, in the presence of the people, Don Luigi appeared carrying on his shoulders the motionless body of Carletto Grua. His whole face was burned and almost unrecognisable. He no longer had any hair nor beard left. He was walking boldly through the fire, endeavouring to keep his courage in spite of that atrocious pain.
At first the crowd was dumb. Then again broke forth in shouts and gestures, waiting ferociously for this great victim to expire before them.
“Here, here, you dog! We want to see you die!”
Don Luigi heard through the flames these last insults. He gathered together all of his will-power and stood for an instant in an attitude of indescribable scorn. Then turning abruptly he disappeared forever where the fire was raging fiercest.