[Footnote: The Scandals That
Occasionally Arise In Connection With That Saintly Institution, The
Foundling Hospital At Naples, Are Enough To Make Humanity Shudder.
Of
856 children living under its motherly care during 1895, 853 "died" in
the course of that one year-
Only three survived; a wholesale massacre.
These 853 murdered children were carried forward in the books as still
living, and the institution, which has a yearly revenue of over 600,000
francs, was debited with their maintenance, while 42 doctors (instead of
the prescribed number of 19) continued to draw salaries for their
services to these innocents that had meanwhile been starved and tortured
to death. The official report on these horrors ends with the words:
"There is no reason to think that these facts are peculiar to the year
1895."]
That the moon stands in sympathetic relations with living vegetation is
a fixed article of faith among the peasantry. They will prune their
plants only when the satellite is waxing - al sottile detta luna, as
they say. Altogether, the moon plays a considerable part in their lore,
as might be expected in a country where she used to be worshipped under
so many forms. The dusky markings on her surface are explained by saying
that the moon used to be a woman and a baker of bread, her face gleaming
with the reflection of the oven, but one day she annoyed her mother, who
took up the brush they use for sweeping away the ashes, and smirched her
face.
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