But At Four O'clock The Lantern Was Extinguished And The Cavern,
Bereft Of Its Salvator-Rosa Glamour, Resolved Itself Into A Prosaic And
Infernally Unclean Hovel.
Issuing from the door, I saw those murky
recesses invaded by the uncompromising light of dawn, and shuddered.
. . .
The railway journey soon dispelled the phantoms of the night. As the
train sped downhill, the sun rose in splendour behind the Murge hills,
devouring mists so thickly couched that, struck by the first beams, they
glistered like compact snow-fields, while their shaded portions might
have been mistaken for stretches of mysterious swamp, from which an
occasional clump of tree-tops emerged, black and island-like. These
dreamland effects lasted but a brief time, and soon the whole face of
the landscape was revealed. An arid region, not unlike certain parts of
northern Africa.
Yet the line passes through places renowned in history. Who would not
like to spend a day at Altamura, if only in memory of its treatment by
the ferocious Cardinal Ruffo and his army of cut-throats? After a heroic
but vain resistance comparable only to that of Saguntum or Petelia,
during which every available metal, and even money, was converted into
bullets to repel the assailers, there followed a three days' slaughter
of young and old; then the cardinal blessed his army and pronounced, in
the blood-drenched streets, a general absolution. Even this man has
discovered apologists. No cause so vile, that some human being will not
be found to defend it.
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