Vendetta! | Page 8

and scattered the petals of a
white rose at our feet. I gave the infant back to the nurse, who waited to
receive it, and said, with a smile, "Tell my wife we have welcomed her
May-blossom."
Guido laid his hand on my shoulder as the servant retired; his face was
unusually pale.
"Thou art a good fellow, Fabio!" he said, abruptly.
"Indeed! How so?" I asked, half laughingly; "I am no better than other
men."
"You are less suspicious than the majority," he returned, turning away
from me and playing idly with a spray of clematis that trailed on one of
the pillars of the veranda.

I glanced at him in surprise. "What do you mean, amico? Have I reason
to suspect any one?"
He laughed and resumed his seat at the breakfast-table.
"Why, no!" he answered, with a frank look. "But in Naples the air is
pregnant with suspicion--jealousy's dagger is ever ready to strike, justly
or unjustly--the very children are learned in the ways of vice. Penitents
confess to priests who are worse than penitents, and by Heaven! in such
a state of society, where conjugal fidelity is a farce"--he paused a
moment, and then went on--"is it not wonderful to know a man like you,
Fabio? A man happy in home affections, without a cloud on the sky of
his confidence?"
"I have no cause for distrust," I said. "Nina is as innocent as the little
child of whom she is to-day the mother."
"True!" exclaimed Ferrari. "Perfectly true!" and he looked me full in
the eyes, with a smile. "White as the virgin snow on the summit of
Mont Blanc--purer than the flawless diamond--and unapproachable as
the furthest star! Is it not so?"
I assented with a certain gravity; something in his manner puzzled me.
Our conversation soon turned on different topics, and I thought no
more of the matter. But a time came--and that speedily--when I had
stern reason to remember every word he had uttered.
CHAPTER II.
Every one knows what kind of summer we had in Naples in 1884. The
newspapers of all lands teemed with the story of its horrors. The
cholera walked abroad like a destroying demon; under its withering
touch scores of people, young and old, dropped down in the streets to
die. The fell disease, born of dirt and criminal neglect of sanitary
precautions, gained on the city with awful rapidity, and worse even
than the plague was the unreasoning but universal panic. The
never-to-be-forgotten heroism of King Humbert had its effect on the
more educated classes, but among the low Neapolitan populace, abject

fear, vulgar superstition, and utter selfishness reigned supreme. One
case may serve as an example of many others. A fisherman, well
known in the place, a handsome and popular young fellow, was seized,
while working in his boat, with the first symptoms of cholera. He was
carried to his mother's house. The old woman, a villainous-looking hag,
watched the little procession as it approached her dwelling, and taking
in the situation at once, she shut and barricaded her door.
"Santissima Madonna!" she yelled, shrilly, through a half-opened
window. "Leave him in the street, the abandoned, miserable one! The
ungrateful pig! He would bring the plague to his own hard-working,
honest mother! Holy Joseph! who would have children? Leave him in
the street, I tell you!"
It was useless to expostulate with this feminine scarecrow; her son was,
happily for himself, unconscious, and after some more wrangling he
was laid down on her doorstep, where he shortly afterward expired, his
body being afterward carted away like so much rubbish by the
beccamorti.
The heat in the city was intense. The sky was a burning dome of
brilliancy, the bay was still as a glittering sheet of glass. A thin column
of smoke issuing from the crater of Vesuvius increased the impression
of an all-pervading, though imperceptible ring of fire, that seemed to
surround the place. No birds sung save in the late evening, when the
nightingales in my gardens broke out in a bubbling torrent of melody,
half joyous, half melancholy. Up on that wooded height where I dwelt
it was comparatively cool. I took all precautions necessary to prevent
the contagion from attacking our household; In fact, I would have left
the neighborhood altogether, had I not known that hasty flight from an
infected district often carries with it the possibility of closer contact
with the disease. My wife, besides, was not nervous--I think very
beautiful women seldom are. Their superb vanity is an excellent shield
to repel pestilence; it does away with the principal element of
danger--fear. As for our Stella, a toddling mite of two years old, she
was a healthy child, for whom neither her mother nor myself
entertained the least anxiety.

Guido Ferrari