There was a parcel of young fellows once who were a nuisance to everybody in Rome, for they were always at some mischievous tricks when it was nothing worse. But there was one of them who was not altogether so bad as the rest. For one thing, there was one practice of devotion he had never forgotten from the days when his mother taught him, and that was, to say a De Profundis whenever he saw a dead body carried past to burial. But what concerned his companions, was the fear lest he should some day perhaps take it into his head to reform, and in that case it was not impossible he might be led to give information against them.
At last they agreed that the best thing they could do was to put him out of the way. Quietly as their conspiracy was conducted, he saw there was something plotting, and determined to be out of reach of their murderous intentions; so he got up early one morning, and rode out of Rome.
On, on, on,2 he went till he had left Rome many miles behind, and then he saw hanging in an oak-tree the body of a man all in pieces, among the branches.
For a moment he was overcome with horror at the sight; but, nevertheless, he did not forget his good practice of saying a De Profundis.
No sooner had he completed the psalm, than one by one the pieces came down from the tree and put themselves together, till a dead man stood before him, all complete. Gladly would he have spurred his horse on and got away from the horrible sight, but he was riveted to the spot, and durst not move, or scarcely take breath. But worse was in store, for now the dreadful apparition took hold of his bridle.
‘Fear nothing, young man!’ said the corpse, in a tone, which though meant to be kind, was so sepulchral that it thrilled the ear. ‘Only change places with me for a little space; you get up in the oak-tree, and lend your horse to me.’
The youth mechanically got off his horse, and climbed up into the tree, while the mangled corpse got on to the horse, and rode away back towards Rome. He had not been gone five minutes when he heard four shots3 fired.
Looking from his elevation in the direction of the sound, he saw his four evil companions, who had just fired their pieces into the corpse which rode his horse, without making it sit a bit less erect than before. Then he saw them go stealthily up to the figure and look at it, and then run away, wild with terror.
As soon as they had turned their backs, the corpse turned the horse’s head round, and trotted back to the oak-tree.
‘Now, my son,’ said the corpse, alighting from the horse, ‘I have done you this good turn because you said a De Profundis for me; but such interpositions don’t befall a man every day. Turn over a new leaf, before a worse thing happens.’
Having said this, the dead body, piece by piece, replaced itself amid the branches of the oak-tree, where it had hung before.
The young man got on his horse again, penitent and thoughtful, and rode to a friary,4 where, after spending an edifying life, he died a holy death.
There was a rich man, I cannot tell you how rich he was, who died and left all his great fortune to his son, palaces and houses, and farms and vineyards. The son entered into possession of all, and became a great man; but he never thought of having a mass said for the soul of his father, from whom he had received all.
There was also, about the same time, a poor man, who had hardly enough to keep body and soul together, and he went into a church to pray that he might have wherewithal to feed his children. So poor was he, that he said within himself, ‘None poorer than I can there be.’ As he said that, his eye lighted on the box where alms were gathered, that masses might be offered for the souls in Purgatory. ‘Yes,’ he said, then, ‘these are poorer than I,’ and he felt in his pocket for his single baiocco, and he put it in the alms box for the holy souls.2
As he came out, he saw a painone3 standing before the door, as if in waiting for him; but as he was well-dressed, and looked rich, the poor man knew he could have no acquaintance with him, and would have passed on.
‘You have done me so much good, and now you don’t speak to me,’ said the stranger.
‘When did I thee much good?’ said the poor man bewildered.
‘Even now,’ said the stranger; for in reality he was no painone, but one of the holy souls who had taken that form, and he alluded to the poor man’s last coin, of which he had deprived himself in charity.
‘I cannot think to what your Excellency4 alludes,’ replied the poor man.
‘Nevertheless it is true,’ returned the painone; ‘and now I will ask you to do me another favour. Will you take this letter to such and such a palace?’ and he gave him the exact address. ‘When you get there, you must insist on giving it into the hands of the master of the house himself. Never mind how many times you are refused, do not go away till you have given it to the master himself.’
‘Never fear, your Excellency,’ answered the poor man, ‘I’ll deliver it right.’
When he reached the palace, it was just as the painone had seemed to expect it would be. First the porter came forward with his cocked hat and his gilt knobbed stick, with the coloured cord twisted over it all the way down, and asked him whither he was going.
‘To Count so-and-so,’ answered the poor man.
‘All right! give it here,’ said the splendid porter.
‘By no means, my orders were to consign it to the count himself.’
‘Go in and try,’ answered the porter. ‘But you may as well save yourself the stairs; they won’t let such as you in to the count.’
‘I must follow orders,’ said the poor man, and passed on.
At the door of the apartment a liveried servant came to open.
‘What do you want up here? if you have brought anything, why didn’t you leave it with the porter?’
‘Because my orders are to give this letter into the count’s own hands,’ answered the poor man.
‘A likely matter I shall call the “Signor Conte” out, and to such as you! Give here, and don’t talk nonsense.’
‘No! into the count’s own hands must I give it.’
‘Don’t be afraid; I’ve lived here these thirty years, and no message for the “Signor Conte” ever went wrong that passed through my hands. Yours isn’t more precious than the rest, I suppose.’
‘I know nothing about that, but I must follow orders.’
‘And so must I, and I know my place too well to call out the “Signor Conte” to the like of you.’
The altercation brought out the valet.
‘This fellow expects the “Signor Conte” to come to the door to take in his letters himself,’ said the lackey, laughing disdainfully. ‘What’s to be done with the poor animal?’
‘Give here, good man,’ said the valet, patronisingly not paying much heed to the remarks of the servant; ‘I am the “Signor Conte’s” own body servant, and giving it to me is the same as giving it to himself.’
‘Maybe,’ answered the poor man, ‘but I’m too simple to understand how one man can be the same as another. My orders are to give it to the count alone, and to the count alone I must give it.’
‘Take it from him, and turn him out,’ said the valet, with supreme disdain, and the lackey was not slow to take advantage of the permission. The poor man, however, would not yield his trust, and the scuffle that ensued brought the count himself out to learn the reason of so much noise.
The letter was now soon delivered. The count started when he saw the handwriting, and was impelled to tear the letter open at once, so much did its appearance seem to surprise him.
‘Who gave you the letter?’ he exclaimed, in an excited manner, as soon as he had rapidly devoured its contents.
‘I cannot tell, I never saw the person before,’ replied the poor man.
‘Would you know him again?’ inquired the count.
‘Oh, most undoubtedly!’ answered the poor man; ‘he said such strange things to me that I looked hard at him.’
‘Then come this way,’ said the count; and he led him into a large hall, round which were hung many portraits in frames. ‘Do you see one among these portraits that at all resembles him?’ he said, when he had given him time to look round the walls.
‘Yes, that is he!’ said the poor man, unhesitatingly, pointing to the portrait of the count’s father, from whom he had inherited such great wealth, and for whom he had never given the alms of a single mass.
‘Then there is no doubt it was himself,’ said the count. ‘In this letter he tells me that you of your poverty have done for him what I with all my wealth have never done,’ he added in a tone of compunction. ‘For you have given alms for the repose of his soul, which I never have; therefore he bids me now take you and all your family into the palace to live with me, and to share all I have with you.’
After that he made the man and all his family come to live in the palace, as his father directed, and he was abundantly provided for the rest of his life.
[‘I know one of that kind,’ interposed one sitting by. ‘Will you hear it? But mine is true, mine is a real fact, and happened no longer ago than last October;’ and he told me the very names and address of the people concerned with the greatest particularity; this was in January 1873.]
The people he had named were a husband and wife, shopkeepers, with a good business. They had taken in a woman, a widow, as they thought, to board with them for life.2
The first night after she came the wife suddenly woke up the husband, saying:—
‘What is it that kneels at the foot of the bed? surely it is a white soul.’
‘I see nothing,’ said the husband; ‘go to sleep!’
The wife said no more, but the next night it was the same thing, and the next, and the next; and she described so sincerely what she saw, and with so much earnestness, that the husband could have no doubt that what she said was true. And as he saw it disturbed her rest, and made her ill, he said:—
‘If it comes again, to-night, we will conjure it.’
It had been going on almost a month (I told you it happened in October), and it was just the night of All Souls’ day3 that he happened to say this.
That night, again, the wife woke him with a start—
‘There it is,’ she said, ‘the white soul; it kneels at the foot of the bed.’
The husband said nothing, but following the direction of his wife’s hand, he solemnly bid the apparition depart, in the name of the Most Holy Trinity and the Madonna.
Though he had seen nothing, he, too, now heard a voice, and the voice said that it was her father whom the wife had seen; that it was not well that they should have in the house the woman whom they had taken in to board, for that it was on her account he was now suffering penance. ‘Think of this,’ he said, finally, ‘for I cannot stay to tell you more; for it is the hour of prayer.’4
The lighting up of a masked ball could not be compared to the brightness5 which filled the room as the spirit disappeared. And this the husband saw well, though he had not seen the soul.
The husband and wife thought a good deal of what they had heard; they had never known before of the father’s intimacy with this woman, but they inquired, and found it was even so.
Then the man took into his head to go to one of these new people, what do they call it? spiritismo, magnetismo,6 or whatever it is. He made them call up the spirit of his wife’s father, and he asked if it was he who had appeared at night in the bedroom all the month through, and he said, ‘yes, that it was.’ And he asked him about all the particulars, and he confirmed them all. ‘Then,’ he said, ‘if indeed it was you, give me some sign to-night;’ and he said he would.
There was a ruler in the chest of drawers in the bedroom, and all through the night there were knocks; now on the ceiling, now on the floor, now on the walls, as if given with that ruler, and we know those ‘spiritismo’ people say the spirits make themselves understood by knocking.
After that, they sent away their boarder, though at considerable pecuniary loss.
[‘I know a story like that,’ said the first man, ‘and a true one too; it happened in 1848 or 1849.’]
2 ‘A vitalizia’ is an agreement by which persons pay a sum down and are taken in to board for the rest of their lives. ↑
3 ‘La Festa dei Morti,’ November 2. ↑
4 ‘Chè è ora dell’ orazione.’ I give this very quaint idea in the words in which it was told to me. ↑
5 ‘Era altro che un festino, il chiarore.’ The lighting up of a theatre for a public masqued ball would naturally be the highest impression of brightness for a poor man in Rome. ‘Altro che’ is his favourite word in the sense of ‘no comparison.’ ‘Altro!’ alone stands for ‘I should think so!’ ‘Isn’t it indeed!’ &c. ↑
6 Since the invasion of September 1870, Rome has been placarded with announcements of mediums who may be consulted on every possible occasion. I give the whole story as it was told me, but I have, of course, no means of knowing how the séance was conducted, and there is every likelihood the man would be so full of the strange occurrence that he would begin by letting out all on which he came to it to seek confirmation. The introduction of these mediums has been welcomed as supplying the means of gratifying that craving after the supernatural which was denied them under the former administration. ‘Witchcraft was forbidden by the former law, therefore we may suppose it was wrong,’ reason the less intelligent and those who wish to be deceived; ‘spiritismo is allowed by the law which rules us to-day, therefore we may suppose it is right;’ and thus we are beginning to see here what Cantù had written of other parts of Italy and Europe: ‘But who will feel the courage to contemn the follies of another age when he sees the absurd credulity of our own, which upon similar manifestations founds other theories.... Recent writers on the subject (see in particular, Allan Kardec, ‘Le Spiritisme à sa plus simple expression,’ ‘Le Livre des esprits,’ &c.), themselves acknowledge that the oracles and pythonesses of old, and the genii, sorcerers, and magicians of later ages, were the predecessors of these mediums. We have therefore come back to that which we ridicule in our ancestors.’ ↑
My story is also of a husband and wife, but they were peasants, and lived outside the gates.
‘It is so cold to-night,’ said the husband to the wife, as they went to bed, ‘we shall freeze if we have another night like it. We must contrive to wake before it is light, and go and get some wood somewhere before we go to work, to make a fire to-morrow night.’
So they woke very early, before it was light, and went out to get wood.2 The husband stood up in the tree, and the wife down below in a ditch, or hole. As she stood there she saw a great white serpent glide past her. ‘Look, look!’ she cried to her husband; ‘see that great white serpent; surely there is something unnatural about it!’
‘A white serpent!’ answered her husband; ‘what nonsense! Who ever heard of such a thing as a white serpent!’
‘There it goes, then,’ said the wife; ‘you can see it for yourself.’
‘I see nothing of the kind,’ said the husband. ‘There are no serpents about Rome this many a long year; and as for a white one, such a thing doesn’t exist.’
While he spoke the serpent went through a hole in the ground. As the husband was so positive, the wife said no more, but they gathered up the wood and went home.
In the night, however, the wife had a dream. She saw an Augustinian friar, long since dead, standing before her, who said ‘Angela! (that was indeed her name) if you would do me a favour listen to me. Did you see a white serpent this morning?’
‘Yes,’ she answered; ‘that I did, though my husband said there was no such thing as a white serpent in existence.’
‘Well, if you would do me a pleasure, go back to the place where you saw the white serpent go in—not where he came out, but where you saw him go into the earth. Dig about that place, and, when you have dug a pretty good hole, a dead man will start up;3 but don’t be afraid, he can’t hurt you, and won’t want to hurt you. Take no notice of him, and go on digging, and no harm will come to you; you have nothing to be afraid of. If you dig on you will come to a heap of money. Take some of the biggest pieces of gold and carry them to St. Peter’s, and take some of the smaller pieces and carry them to S. Agostino,4 and let masses be said for that dead man. But you must tell no one alive anything about it.’
The woman was much too frightened to do what the friar had said, but she managed to keep the story to herself, though it made her look so anxious her husband could not help noticing something.
The next night the friar came again, and said the same words, only he added: ‘If you are so frightened, Angela, you may take with you for company a little boy, but he must not be over seven, nor under six; and what you do you must tell no one. But you have nothing to fear, for if you do as I have said no one can harm you.’
For all his assurances, however, she could not make up her mind to go, nor this day could she even keep the story from her husband, for it weighed upon her mind. When he heard the story he said, ‘I’ll go with you.’
‘Ah! if you’ll go, then I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘But how will it be? The friar was so particular that I should tell no one, evil may happen if I take another with me.’
‘If there is nothing in the story, there’s nothing to fear,’ said the husband; ‘and, if the story is true, there is a heap of money to reward one for a little fear; so let’s go. Besides, if you think any harm will happen to you for taking me, I can stand on the top of the bank while you go down to the hole, and it can’t be said properly that I’m there, while I shall yet be by to give you courage and help you if anything happens.’
‘That way, I don’t mind it,’ answered the wife; and they went out together to the place, the husband, as he had said, standing by on a bank, and the wife creeping down into a hole. They took also two donkeys with them to bring away the treasure.
At the first stroke of the woman’s spade there came such lugubrious cries that she was frightened into running away.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ said the husband; ‘cries don’t hurt!’ So the woman began digging again, and then there came out cries again worse than before, and the noise of rattling of chains, dreadful to hear. So terrified was the woman that she swooned away.
The husband then went down into the hole with what water he could find to bring her to herself, but the moment he got into the hole the spirits set upon him and beat him so that he had great livid marks all over.
After that neither of them had the heart to go back to try it again.
But the woman was in the habit of going to confession to one of the Augustinian fathers, and she told him all. The fathers sent and had the place dug up all about, and thought they had proved there was nothing there; but for all that, it generally happens that when a thing like that has to be done, it must be done by the person who is sent, and anybody else but that person trying it proves nothing at all.
One thing is certain, that when those horrid assassins5 hide a heap of money they put a dead man’s body at the entrance of the hole where they hide it, and say to it, ‘Thou be on guard till one of such a name, be it Teresa, be it Angela, be it Pietro, comes;’ and no one else going can be of any use, for it may be a hundred years before the coincidence can happen of a person just of the right name lighting on the spot—perhaps never.
‘Yes, yes! that’s a fact; that is not old wives’ nonsense,’6 was the chorus which greeted this enunciation.7
[‘I, too, know a fact of that kind which most certainly happened, for I know Maria Grazia to whom it happened well, before she went to live at Velletri,’ said one of them.]
1 ‘La serpe bianca;’ ‘serpe’ is of both genders, but is most commonly used in the feminine as in the common saying ‘allevarsi la serpe in seno,’ to nurture a serpent in one’s bosom. ↑
2 ‘Per far legna.’ ‘Fare’ is brought in on all occasions. Bazzarini gives 59 closely printed columns of instances of its various uses; here it means to cut wood for burning; ‘legno’ is wood; ‘legna,’ wood for burning. ↑
4 S. Agostino is the favourite with the people of all the churches of Rome. ↑
5 ‘Brutti assassini.’ In a country where the cultus of ‘il bello’ has been so well understood, ‘ugly’ has naturally come to be used as a term of deepest reproach. ↑
6 ‘Si, si, questo è positivo, non è donnicciolara, è positivo.’ ↑
7 This kind of spell seems analogous to one of which a curious account is preserved by Menghi (Compendio dell’Arte Essorcista, lib. ii. cap. xl.), which I quote, because it has a local connexion with Rome, and there are not many such. An inhabitant of Dachono in Bohemia, he says, brought his son, a priest, to Rome in the Pontificate of Pius II. (1458–64) to be exorcised, as all relief failed in his own country; a woman whom he had reproved for her bad life had bewitched him, adding, ‘that the spell (maldicio) was imposed on him by her under a certain tree, and if it was not removed in the same way, he could not otherwise be set free; and she would not reveal under what tree it was.’ The spell acted upon him only at such times as he was about to exercise his sacred ministry, and then it impeded his actions, forced him to put his tongue out at the cross, &c. &c. ‘The more earnest the devotion with which I strive to give myself to prayer,’ he said, ‘so much the more cruelly the devil rends me’ (mi lacera). In St. Peter’s, the narrator goes on to say, is a column brought from the Temple of Solomon, by means of which many possessed persons have been liberated, because our Lord had leant against it when teaching there, and it was thought that this might be sufficiently potent to represent the fatal tree. He was brought to it, however, in vain. Being tied to it, and asked to point out the spot where Christ had touched it, the spirit which possessed him replied by making him bite it on a certain spot with his teeth and say, ‘Qui stette, qui stette,’ (here He stood) in Italian, although he did not know a word of the language, and was obliged to inquire what the words he had uttered meant. But the spell, nevertheless, was not got rid of thus. It was then understood that the spirit must be of that kind of which Christ had said ‘he goeth not out except by prayer and fasting;’ and a pious and venerable bishop, taking compassion on the man, devoted himself to prayer and fasting for him all through Lent; and thus he was delivered and sent back to his own country rejoicing. ↑
Maria Grazia lived in a convent of nuns at Velletri, and did their errands for them. One night one of the nuns who was ill got much worse towards night, and the factor1 not being there, the Superior called up Maria Grazia and said to her,—‘Maria Grazia, Sister Maria such a one2 is so very bad that I must get you to go and call the provost to her. I’m sorry to send you out so late, but I fear she won’t last till morning.’
Maria Grazia couldn’t say nay to such an errand, and off she set by a clear moonlight to go to the house of the provost, which was a good step off and out of the town. All went well till Maria Grazia had left the houses behind her, but she was no sooner in the open country than she saw a great procession of white-robed priests and acolytes bearing torches coming towards her, chanting solemnly. ‘What a fine procession!’ thought Maria Grazia; ‘I must hasten on to see it. But what can it be for at this time of night?’
Still she never doubted it was a real procession till she got quite close, and then, to her surprise, the procession parted in two to let her go through the midst, which a real procession would never have done.
You may believe that she was frightened as she passed right through the midst of those beings who must have belonged to the other world, dazed as she was with the unearthly light of the flaring torches; it seemed as if it would last for ever. But it did come to an end at last, and then she was so frightened she didn’t know what to do. Her legs trembled too much to carry her on further from home, and if she turned back there would be that dreadful procession again. Curiosity prompted her to turn her head, in spite of her fears; and what gave her almost more alarm than seeing the procession was the fact that it was no longer to be seen. What could have become of it in the midst of the open field? Then the fear of the good nun dying without the sacraments through her faint-heartedness stirred her, but in vain she tried to pluck up courage. ‘Oh!’ she thought, ‘if there were only some one going the same road, then I shouldn’t mind!’
She had hardly formed the wish when she saw a peasant coming along over the very spot where the procession had passed out of sight. ‘Now it’s all right,’ she said; for by the light of the moon he seemed a very respectable steady-looking peasant.
‘What did you think of that procession, good man,’ said Maria Grazia; ‘for it must have passed close by you, too?’
The peasant continued coming towards her, but said nothing.
‘Didn’t it frighten you? It did me; and I don’t think I could have moved from the spot if you hadn’t come up. I’ve got to go to the provost’s house, to fetch him to a dying nun; it’s only a step off this road, will you mind walking with me till I get there?’
The peasant continued walking towards her, but answered nothing.
‘Maybe you’re afraid of me, as I was of the procession, that you don’t speak,’ continued Maria Grazia; ‘but I am not a spirit. I am Maria Grazia, servant in such and such a convent at Velletri.’
But still the peasant said nothing.
‘What a very odd man!’ thought Maria Grazia. ‘But as he seems to be going my way he’ll answer the purpose of company whether he speaks or not.’ And she walked on without fear till she came to the provost’s house, the peasant always keeping beside her but never speaking. Arrived at the provost’s gate she turned round to salute and thank him, and he was nowhere to be seen. He too had disappeared! He too was a spirit!
When the archpriest came he had his nephew and his servant to go with him, and they carried torches of straw,3 for it seems in that part of the country they use straw torches; so she went back in good company.
And Maria Grazia told me that herself.
But the belief in ghosts, though it exists, as we have seen by the above specimens, is by no means generally diffused. ‘No!1 I don’t believe such things,’ is the general reply I have received when inquiring for them. I could not, indeed, help being annoyed with the strongmindedness of an old woman one day, who asserted her contempt for the idea so persistently that she quite ‘shut up’ two others who were inclined to be communicative of their experiences.
‘I’ve often slept in a room where it was said the ghost of a woman who was killed there, walked about with her head under her arm; but I never saw her,’ said I, to set the thing going.
‘Oh! I wouldn’t have done that for the world!’ exclaimed Nos. 2 and 3 together.
‘And why not?’ said No. 1. ‘There was nothing to be seen, of course. There are no such things as ghosts!’2
‘Ah! Some see them and some don’t see them, and you’re one of those who don’t see them. That’s where it is,’ said No. 2.
‘Yes,’ added No. 3; ‘I know lots of people who have seen them,’ and she was going on to give examples, but No. 1 put her down.
‘Did you ever see one yourself?’ interposed I, to keep the ball rolling.
‘Well, yes ... so far that ...’ she began, hesitatingly; but No. 1 broke in again with her vehement iteration that there are no ghosts.
‘I know there are, though,’ persisted No. 2; ‘for my mother has told me there is a house....’
‘Here in Rome?’ asked I.
‘Yes, here in Rome, where she used to work, where there was a ghost3 that used to pull the bedclothes off anyone who slept in that particular room, and leave him uncovered. As fast as you pulled them over you, the spirit pulled them off again;’ and she imitated the movement with her hands.
‘Oibo!’ interposed No. 1. ‘I’ll tell you what ghosts are. Ghosts are most often robbers, who get people to think they are ghosts, in order to be able to rob in peace. There was a famous one, I remember well, about the year 1830, who used to be called the Ghost of St. John’s,4 because he used to make himself heard in the houses about St. John Lateran. There were several robberies in the same neighbourhood just at the same time, but no one thought of connecting the two things, till at last one bethought him of it, and he laid in wait, pistol in hand, till the ghost came by.
‘By it came; and “pop!” went the pistol. And there, on the spot, lay the body of one whom the police didn’t see for the first time.
‘That’s what ghosts are!’
‘That may have been,’ replied Nos. 2 and 3; ‘but that doesn’t prove that there are no ghosts for all that.’
‘Ghosts! ghosts! are all in silly people’s own heads!’ exclaimed No. 1. ‘I can tell you of one there was in an old palace at Foligno. No one would sleep there because of the ghosts, and the palace became quite deserted. At last a sportsman,5 who was a relation of mine, said he wasn’t afraid; he would go up there one night, and give an account of it. He went there, pistol in hand. At the time for the ghosts to appear, in through a hole over the window did come a great thing with wings. The sportsman, nothing daunted, fired at it; and, lo and behold, a large hawk6 fell dead on the floor; then another, and another, up to five of them.
‘That’s what ghosts are, I tell you!’
[The following is from another narrator.]
Some friars were going round begging for their convent, when night overtook them in a wood.
‘What shall we do if any wolves come? I don’t believe there is any habitation in these parts, and there will be no place to run to and no one to help us. We must commend ourselves to the Madonna, and wait the event.’
They had scarcely done so when one of them saw a light sparkling through the trees. They thought it came from some woodman’s cottage, and followed its leading; but instead of a cottage they came to a handsome inn. As the door stood invitingly open they went in: a fire blazed on the hearth; a repast was spread on the table; a number of maidens, attired in pure and shining white, flitted about and brought all they wanted. When they had well supped, these led them to a room where was a bed apiece, and in the morning again they gave them breakfast.
Before they started again, the friars asked the maidens to take them to offer their thanks to the mistress of the house, and they led them into a room where was a most beautiful lady, who inquired kindly if they had been well served and wished them a good journey. Moreover, as they went she gave them a folded paper.
The friars, unused to be so entertained, were much bewildered, and wondered what lady it could be who lived all alone with her maidens in that wild wood; and they turned back to look at the inn that they might know it again, but it had entirely disappeared, nor was there a vestige of it to be found.
Then they opened the folded paper the lady had given them, and by the shining letters within they knew it was the Madonna herself had entertained them.
Another, who didn’t believe there were ghosts to be seen—‘she had heard plenty of such stories, but she didn’t give her mind to such things,’—yet told me, she believed there were treasures hid in countless places,7 but people could seldom get at them; there was always a hailstorm, or an earthquake, or something, which happened to stop them; the Devil wouldn’t let people get at them.
Another, whose belief in ghosts was doubtful, reckoned she knew various cases to be facts, in which men hid treasures under a spell, that could be removed if a person could devise the counterspell, by hitting, even accidentally, on what the original spell had been.8
‘If you want ghost-stories, I can tell them as well as another; but mind I don’t believe such things,’ said another.
‘Tell me what you’ve heard, then.’
‘Well, I have heard say that there was a woman in the Monti,9 and not so long ago either, who was always finding money about the house, and that too, in places where she knew no one could have put it. The first thing in the morning when she got up she would find it on the floor all about the room. Or if she got up from her work in the middle of the day, though she knew no one had come in, there it would be.
‘One day she saw three silver papetti10 on the floor. It wasn’t that there was no silver money ever to be seen, and nothing but dirty paper notes, and half of them false, as it is now o’ days. It was in the time of the Pope, and there was plenty of silver for those who had money at all, but still, to see three silver papetti lying on the floor all of a sudden was a sight for anyone.
‘It looked so strange that she hesitated before she picked it up. But at last she made up her mind and took it. No sooner had she done so than a spirit appeared before her, and said, “Come down with me into the cellar and I’ll show you something.”
‘“No, thank you, sir,” said the woman, not knowing what to do for fear.
‘“Nonsense! come down, you shan’t be hurt,” said the spirit.
‘“I’d rather not, sir, thank you,” was all the woman could stammer out.
‘“You must come! I’ll give you something to make you rich for good and all,” persisted the spirit; and, somehow, she didn’t know how, she felt herself obliged to follow him.
‘Down in the cellar was another spirit awaiting her, and the moment she got down they took her, the one by the head and the other by the feet, and laid her into a coffin11 which stood there all ready on a bier.12 One at each end, they took it up, with the woman in it, and walked round and round the cellar with it, chaunting the “Miserere,” and she was too frightened to call out, much more to attempt to move.
‘By-and-by they set the bier down, and as she heard nothing more she concluded the spirits were gone; still she durst not move till some few rays of daylight began to peep through; then she summoned up courage to get out of the coffin.
‘When she did so she saw it was all of solid gold, as well as the bier. There was gold enough to have made her rich to the end of her days, but she was so frightened that she wasn’t able to enjoy it, but died at the end of a month; for riches that are got in ways that are not straightforward never profit anyone.
‘That’s the story as it’s told; but I don’t believe those things, mind you.’
‘Ah! I remember, too, when I was quite a girl and lived with my father and mother in a house near Piazza Barberini, I remember one day my little sister Ghisa coming running up out of the cellar crying out there was a spirit which had stood waving its hand, and beckoning to her.
‘And when the others went down to see what it was all about, they did find some human bones in a corner of the cellar, and no one knew how they got there. But that didn’t prove that the child had actually seen a ghost.’
[The above story of the golden coffin, it will be observed, was told as of a particular district in Rome. Another time, it was told me of a village in the Campagna; the narrator said she knew the name well, but could not recollect it at the moment. In other respects, there were few differences of detail; but the countrywoman was more robust and courageous than the town woman, and this is how she got on.]
‘She was always finding half-pence about the ground where she worked. One day she found a silver piece; as she went to pick it up she saw “One” standing by. “Come with me!” he said; and the countrywoman, not at all afraid, went with him. He led her by solitary ways till he came to a lone empty cottage, when he left her. Quite undaunted, she walked in. There was a large empty room in the midst, all lighted up with ever so many lights.
‘“Don’t touch, don’t touch!” screamed an anxious voice. “Touch! touch!” shouted a more gloomy voice. At last she did touch.’
[‘Touched what?’ asked I; ‘the lights, or the floor, or what?’
The narrator was posed by the question.
‘Oh, I don’t know what she touched. It must be supposed she touched something.’]
‘Instantly all the lights went out, and she stood in the strange place in the dark. Still she was not frightened. She had the courage to strike a light. By its means she saw there was now a large coffin in the midst of the room. She went straight up to it and opened it. It was full of money! Waiting till daylight, she took home with her as much as ever she could carry. But she kept her own counsel, and never told anyone, and when she wanted money she went back there and took it.
‘But if she never told anyone, how did anyone know the story?’
‘This one now is quite true, for Sora Maria (you know who I mean) told me of it, and she knew the woman as well as her own sister.
‘This woman lived near the church of S. Spirito de Napoletani—you know it?’
‘Yes, in Via Giulia.’
‘Exactly. Well, she used to take in washing to make a little for herself more than what her husband gave her. But he didn’t like her doing it, and was very angry whenever he saw her at it. But as he was out all day at his work, she used to manage to get through with it in his absence pretty well.
‘One day the water would not boil, all she could do. First she got excited, then she got angry. “It isn’t that I care,” she said; “but if my husband comes home and sees what I am doing he’ll be so angry! What will he say! What shall I do! I would give my soul to the devil only to get it boiling in time!”
‘Scarcely had she said the words when blu, blu, blu! the water began to bubble up in the pot, boiling furiously all of a sudden, and though it was now so short a time before her husband came back, all the work was done and out of sight, and he perceived nothing.
‘In the night came a paino,13 and stood in the doorway of the bedroom and beckoned to her; and as she looked she saw that every now and then flames and sparks flew about, out of him.
‘At last she could stand it no longer, and she woke her husband and told him all. The husband could see nothing, and tried to quiet her, but she kept crying out, now, “Here he is, here!” and now, “There he is, there!” till at last he was obliged to call the friars of S. Spirito de’ Napolitani to her to exorcise the spirit; and it was very difficult, because she had promised to give her soul to the devil; but it had been thoughtlessly done, and in the end the apparition was got rid of.’
[It so happens, however, that the church of S. Spirito de’ Napolitani is served by secular priests, and not friars.]
‘Here’s another thing I have heard that will do for you.
‘There were two who took a peasant and carried him into the Campagna.’
‘What! two ghosts?’
‘No, no! two fellows who had more money than they knew what to do with. They took him into the Campagna and made an omelette very good, with plenty of sweet-scented herbs in it, and made him eat it.
‘Then they took a barrel and measured him against it, and then another, till they found one to fit, and killed him and filled it up with money, and made a hole in the earth and buried it.
‘And they said over it, “No one may disturb you till one comes who makes an omelette with just the same sweet-scented herbs as we have used, and makes it just on the top of this hole. Then, come out and say, ‘This gold is yours.’”
‘And, of course, in the ordinary course of things, no one would have thought of making an omelette with just those same herbs, just on the top of that hole. But there was one who knew the other two, and suspected something of what they were going to do, and he went up and hid himself in a tree, and watched all that was done, and heard the words.
‘As soon as they were gone he came down and took some nice fresh eggs, and just the same sweet-scented herbs the others had used, and made an omelette just over the hole where he had seen them bury the barrel with the money and the man in it.
‘He had no sooner done so than the man came out all whole and well, and said: “Oh, how many years have I been shut up in that dark place” (though he hadn’t been there half-an-hour) “till you came to deliver me! Therefore all the gold is yours.”
‘Such things can’t be true, so I don’t believe them; but that’s what they tell.’
‘And don’t they tell other stories about there being treasures hid about Rome?’
‘Oh, yes; and some of them are true. It is quite certain that ——’ (and she named a very rich Roman prince) ‘found all the money that makes him so rich bricked up in a wall. They were altering a wall, and they came upon some gold. It was all behind a great wall, as big as the side of a room—all full, full of gold. When they came and told him he pretended not to be at all surprised, and said: “Oh, yes; it’s some money I put away there; it’s nothing; leave it alone.” But in the night he went down secretly and fetched it away,14 and that’s how he became so rich; for his father was a money-changer, who had a table where he changed money in the open street, and my father knew him quite well.’
‘Then there’s the ——’ (another rich family). ‘They got their money by confiscation of another15 family, generations ago. That’s why they’re so charitable. What they give away in charity to the poor is immense; but it is because they know how the money came into the family, and they want to make amends for their ancestors.’
[These treasure stories are common everywhere. In Tirol, especially, they abound, and are of two kinds. First, concerning treasure hidden in the earth, arising out of the metal mines that were formerly worked there, and the carbuncles which are still found; and the second, precisely like these, of money walled-up in old houses and castles. A countryman, who saw me sketching the old ruin of Monte Rufiano, on a height not far from the banks of Lake Thrasimene, told me a story about it, just like a Tirolese story, of treasure hidden ever so deep under it, and guarded by twelve spectres, who went about, carrying torches in procession, on a Good Friday.
Senhor de Saraiva tells me there is a great variety of such stories in Portugal, where the treasures are generally said to have been hidden by the Moors, and are supposed to be buried under a gigantic depth of rock. A place was once pointed out to him, where there were said to be two enormous jars, one full of gold, and the other of boiling pitch. If, in digging, a man came upon the right one, he would be rich enough to buy up the whole world; but if, by ill luck, his spade first reached the other, the pitch would overflow and destroy everyone on the face of the earth; so that no one dared to make the attempt. The people believe that such localities may be revealed to them in dreams. But they must dream the same dream three nights running, and not tell it to anyone. If they tell it, they will find the money all turned to charcoal. Brick boxes of charcoal have frequently been found buried under Roman boundary stones in Portugal, and in this, he thinks, lies the origin of this latter fancy.
It is remarkable how many odds and ends of history remain laid up in the memories of the Roman people, like the majolica vases and point-lace in their houses. A great favourite with them is the story of Beatrice Cenci, which they tell, under the name of ‘La bella Cenci,’ with more or less exaggeration of detail.
‘Do you know the story of “Sciarra Colonna?”’ said an old woman, who seemed scarcely a person likely to know much about such matters.]
1 ‘Ma che!’ is a very strong and indignant form of ‘No!’ about equivalent to ‘What are you thinking of?’ ‘How can you?’ In Tuscany they say, ‘Che! Che!’ ↑
2 ‘Fantasimi,’ for ‘fantasmi,’ apparitions. ↑
4 ‘Il fantasimo di S. Giovanni.’ ↑
5 ‘Cacciatore’ is a huntsman or sportsman of any kind; but in Rome it designates especially a man of a roving and adventurous class whose occupation in life is to shoot game for the market according to the various seasons, as there are large tracts of country where game is not preserved. ↑
6 ‘Falcaccio,’ a horrid, great hawk. ↑
7 Cancellieri (Mercato, § xvi.) mentions the actual finding of such a treasure; or at least of ‘thousands of pieces of gold money, in a hole leading to a drain of the fountain in Piazza Madama, on May 30, 1652, by a boy who had accidentally dropped a toy into this hole.’ One such fact would afford substance to a multitude of such fictions: though they doubtless had their origin in the discovery of mineral wealth. ↑
8 See conversation at the end of the ‘Serpe bianca.’ Further details of a similar nature were given me in connection with a number of brigand stories which I have in MS. ↑
9 ‘Monti,’ Rione Monti, the most populous district in Rome. ↑
10 ‘Papetto,’ equal to two pauls; about three halfpence more than a (silver) lira or franc. In use in Rome until the monetary convention with France in 1868. ↑
11 ‘Cataletto,’ a kind of large roomy coffin, with a hollow wagonheaded lid, in which dead or wounded persons are carried. ↑
12 ‘Barretta’ or ‘bara,’ is the bier on which the ‘cataletto’ is carried; but it is most often made all in one, and either word is used for either, as also ‘feretro.’ ‘Aver la bocca sulla bara,’ is ‘to have one foot in the grave.’ ↑
13 ‘Paino,’ see n. 3, p. 264. ↑
14 It must be a very quaint condition of mind which can imagine that a fortune of something like three millions sterling can be quietly removed in secret in gold coin from a cellar to a bedroom in the small hours of the night. But then to persons like the narrator a few pieces of gold seem a fortune. ↑
15 I do not give the names because, though the tradition is probably true enough of somebody, the particular names introduced were decidedly incorrect historically. ↑