It lies in the direction of the cemetery,
outside the town; "its lonely position," he says, "made it interesting,
and the cupola of coloured tiles (like that of the cathedral of Amalfi)
remained intact, a bright spot against the grey hills behind." This
cupola has recently been removed, but part of the old walls serve as
foundation for a new sanctuary, a sordid-looking structure with
red-tiled roof: I am glad to have taken a view of it, some years ago,
ere its transformation. Its patroness is the Madonna del Carmine - the
same whose church in Naples is frequented by thieves and cut-throats,
who make a special cult of this Virgin Motherand invoke Her blessing on
their nefarious undertakings.
The old church, he told me, was built in the middle of the seventeenth
century; this new one, he agreed, might have been constructed on more
ambitious lines, "but nowadays - - " and he broke off, with eloquent
aposiopesis.
It was the same, he went on, with the road to the cemetery; why should
it not be continued right up to the cape of the Column as in olden days,
over ground dove ogni passo e una memoria: where every footstep is a
memory?
"Rich Italians," he said, "sometimes give away money to benefit the
public. But the very rich - never! And at Cotrone, you must remember,
every one belongs to the latter class."
We spoke of the Sila, which he had occasionally visited.
"What?" he asked incredulously, "you have crossed the whole of that
country, where there is nothing to eat - nothing in the purest and most
literal sense of that word? My dear sir! You must feel like Hannibal,
after his passage of the Alps."
Those barren clay-hills on our right of which Gissing speaks (they are
like the baize of the Apennines) annoyed him considerably; they were
the malediction of the town, he declared. At the same time, they
supplied him with the groundwork of a theory for which there is a good
deal to be said. The old Greek city, he conjectured, must have been
largely built of bricks made from their clay, which is once more being
utilized for this purpose. How else account for its utter disappearance?
Much of the finer buildings were doubtless of stone, and these have been
worked into the fort, the harbour and palazzi of new Cotrone; but this
would never account for the vanishing of a town nearly twelve miles in
circumference. Bricks, he said, would explain the mystery; they had
crumbled into dust ere yet the Romans rebuilt, with old Greek stones,
the city on the promontory now occupied by the new settlement.
