第246章

'Now it happened that one of the female servants was much taken with what she saw and heard,and gave herself up entirely to the will of the subordinate,who had quite as much dominion over her as his superior had over the ladies;the other maid,however,the one who had a kind of respect for me,was not so easily besotted;she used to laugh at what she saw,and at what the fellow told her,and from her I learnt that amongst other things intended by these priestly confederates was robbery;she said that the poor old governor had already been persuaded by his daughters to put more than a thousand pounds into the superior priest's hands for purposes of charity and religion,as was said,and that the subordinate one had already inveigled her fellow-servant out of every penny which she had saved from her wages,and had endeavoured likewise to obtain what money she herself had,but in vain.With respect to myself,the fellow shortly after made an attempt towards obtaining a hundred crowns,of which,by some means,he knew me to be in possession,telling me what a meritorious thing it was to give one's superfluities for the purposes of religion."That is true,"said I,"and if,after my return to my native country,Ifind I have anything which I don't want myself,I will employ it in helping to build a Methodist chapel."'By the time that the three months were expired for which we had hired the palace of the needy Prince,the old governor began to talk of returning to England,at least of leaving Italy.I believe he had become frightened at the calls which were continually being made upon him for money;for after all,you know,if there is a sensitive part of a man's wearing apparel,it is his breeches pocket;but the young ladies could not think of leaving dear Italy and the dear priest;and then they had seen nothing of the country,they had only seen Naples;before leaving dear Italia they must see more of the country and the cities;above all,they must see a place which they called the Eternal City,or some similar nonsensical name;and they persisted so that the poor governor permitted them,as usual,to have their way;and it was decided what route they should take-that is,the priest was kind enough to decide for them,and was also kind enough to promise to go with them part of the route,as far as a place where there was a wonderful figure of Holy Mary,which the priest said it was highly necessary for them to see before visiting the Eternal City:so we left Naples in hired carriages,driven by fellows they call veturini,cheating,drunken dogs,I remember they were.Besides our own family there was the priest and his subordinate,and a couple of hired lackeys.We were several days upon the journey,travelling through a very wild country,which the ladies pretended to be delighted with,and which the governor cursed on account of the badness of the roads;and when we came to any particularly wild spot we used to stop,in order to enjoy the scenery,as the ladies said;and then we would spread a horse-cloth on the ground,and eat bread and cheese,and drink wine of the country.And some of the holes and corners in which we bivouacked,as the ladies called it,were something like this place where we are now,so that when Icame down here it put me in mind of them.At last we arrived at the place where was the holy image.

'We went to the house or chapel in which the holy image was kept-a frightful,ugly black figure of Holy Mary,dressed in her usual way;and after we had stared at the figure,and some of our party had bowed down to it,we were shown a great many things which were called holy relics,which consisted of thumb-nails,and fore-nails,and toe-nails,and hair,and teeth,and a feather or two,and a mighty thigh-bone,but whether of a man or a camel I can't say;all of which things,I was told,if properly touched and handled,had mighty power to cure all kinds of disorders.And as we went from the holy house we saw a man in a state of great excitement:he was foaming at the mouth,and cursing the holy image and all its household,because,after he had worshipped it and made offerings to it,and besought it to assist him in a game of chance which he was about to play,it had left him in the lurch,allowing him to lose all his money.And when I thought of all the rubbish I had seen,and the purposes which it was applied to,in conjunction with the rage of the losing gamester at the deaf and dumb image,I could not help comparing the whole with what my poor brother used to tell me of the superstitious practices of the blacks on the high Barbary shore,and their occasional rage and fury at the things they worshipped;and I said to myself,If all this here doesn't smell of fetish,may I smell fetid.

'At this place the priest left us,returning to Naples with his subordinate,on some particular business I suppose.It was,however,agreed that he should visit us at the Holy City.We did not go direct to the Holy City,but bent our course to two or three other cities which the family were desirous of seeing;but as nothing occurred to us in these places of any particular interest,I shall take the liberty of passing them by in silence.At length we arrived at the Eternal City:an immense city it was,looking as if it had stood for a long time,and would stand for a long time still;compared with it,London would look like a mere assemblage of bee-skeps;however,give me the bee-skeps with their merry hum and bustle,and life and honey,rather than that huge town,which looked like a sepulchre,where there was no life,no busy hum,no bees,but a scanty sallow population,intermixed with black priests,white priests,gray priests;and though I don't say there was no honey in the place,for I believe there was,I am ready to take my Bible oath that it was not made there,and that the priests kept it all for themselves.