Their faces seem to have
been chopped with a hatchet into masks of sombre virility; a hard life
amid burning limestone deserts is reflected in their countenances.
None the less, they have a public garden; even more immature than that
of Lucera, but testifying to greater taste. Its situation, covering a
forlorn semicircular tract of ground about the old Anjou castle, is a
priori a good one. But when the trees are fully grown, it will be
impossible to see this fine ruin save at quite close quarters - just
across the moat.
I lamented this fact to a solitary gentleman who was strolling about
here and who replied, upon due deliberation:
"One cannot have everything."
Then he added, as a suggestive afterthought:
"Inasmuch as one thing sometimes excludes another."
I pause, to observe parenthetically that this habit of uttering
platitudes in the grand manner as though disclosing an idea of vital
novelty (which Charles Lamb, poor fellow, thought peculiar to natives of
Scotland) is as common among Italians as among Englishmen. But veiled in
sonorous Latinisms, the staleness of such remarks assumes an air of
profundity.
"For my part," he went on, warming to his theme, "I am thoroughly
satisfied. Who will complain of the trees? Only a few makers of bad
pictures. They can go elsewhere. Our country, dear sir, is encrusted,
with old castles and other feudal absurdities, and if I had the
management of things - - "
The sentence was not concluded, for at that moment his hat was blown off
by a violent gust of wind, and flew merrily over beds of flowering
marguerites in the direction of the main street, while he raced after
it, vanishing in a cloud of dust. The chase must have been long and
arduous; he never returned.
Wandering about the upper regions of this fortress whose chambers are
now used as a factory of cement goods and a refuge for some poor
families, I espied a good pre-renaissance relief of Saint Michael and
the dragon immured in the masonry, and overhung by the green leaves of
an exuberant wild fig that has thrust its roots into the sturdy old
walls. Here, at Manfredonia, we are already under the shadow of the holy
mountain and the archangel's wings, but the usual representations of him
are childishly emasculate - the negation of his divine and heroic
character. This one portrays a genuine warrior-angel of the old type:
grave and grim. Beyond this castle and the town-walls, which are best
preserved on the north side, nothing in Manfredonia is older than 1620.
There is a fine campanile, but the cathedral looks like a shed for
disused omnibuses.
Along the streets, little red flags are hanging out of the houses, at
frequent intervals: signals of harbourage for the parched wayfarer.
Within, you behold a picturesque confusion of rude chairs set among
barrels and vats full of dark red wine where, amid Rembrandtesque
surroundings, you can get as drunk as a lord for sixpence.
