A Little, Lazy,
Italian Town, The Inhabitants Of Which, Apparently Heedless And
Listless, Are Said To Be Little Better Than The Brigands Which Surround
Them, And Indeed Are Half Of Them Supposed To Be In Some Way Or Other
Connected With The Robbers.
A vast, rocky height rises perpendicularly
above it, with the ruins of the castle of Theodoric the Goth, crowning
its summit; before it spreads the wide bosom of the Mediterranean, that
sea without flux or reflux.
There seems an idle pause in every thing
about this place. The port is without a sail, excepting that once in a
while a solitary felucca may be seen, disgorging its holy cargo of
baccala, the meagre provision for the Quaresima or Lent. The naked
watch towers, rising here and there along the coast, speak of pirates
and corsairs which hover about these shores: while the low huts, as
stations for soldiers, which dot the distant road, as it winds through
an olive grove, intimate that in the ascent there is danger for the
traveller and facility for the bandit.
Indeed, it is between this town and Fondi that the road to Naples is
Mostly infested by banditti. It winds among rocky and solitary places,
where the robbers are enabled to see the traveller from a distance from
the brows of hills or impending precipices, and to lie in wait for him,
at the lonely and difficult passes.
At the time that the estafette made this sudden appearance, almost in
cuerpo, the audacity of the robbers had risen to an unparalleled
height. They had their spies and emissaries in every town, village, and
osteria, to give them notice of the quality and movements of
travellers. They did not scruple to send messages into the country
towns and villas, demanding certain sums of money, or articles of dress
and luxury; with menaces of vengeance in case of refusal. They had
plundered carriages; carried people of rank and fortune into the
mountains and obliged them to write for heavy ransoms; and had
committed outrages on females who had fallen in their power.
The police exerted its rigor in vain. The brigands were too numerous
And powerful for a weak police. They were countenanced and cherished by
several of the villages; and though now and then the limbs of
malefactors hung blackening in the trees near which they had committed
some atrocity; or their heads stuck upon posts in iron cages made some
dreary part of the road still more dreary, still they seemed to strike
dismay into no bosom but that of the traveller.
The dark, handsome young man; and the Venetian lady, whom I have
mentioned, had arrived early that afternoon in a private carriage,
drawn by mules and attended by a single servant. They had been recently
married, were spending the honeymoon in travelling through these
delicious countries, and were on their way to visit a rich aunt of the
young lady's at Naples.
The lady was young, and tender and timid.
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