Читать книгу My Recollections - Jules 1842-1912 Massenet - Страница 11

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What never to be forgotten times they were for youthful artists, when we shared our enthusiasms for all we saw in these pleasantly picturesque villages—a picturesqueness which has certainly gone by now.

Our lodgings were in the most primitive inns. I remember that one night I was greatly disturbed by the feeling that my neighbor in the garret had set the miserable hovel on fire. Falguière had the same idea too. It was only imagination. It was the bright starlight shining through the dilapidated ceiling.

As we passed through the woods of Subiacco, a shepherd's zampogna (a sort of rustic bagpipe) sounded a burst of melody which I presently noted down on a bit of paper loaned me by a Benedictine monk in a neighboring monastery. These measures became the first notes of Marie-Magdeleine, the sacred drama which I was already planning for my first venture.

I still have the sketch Chaplain made of me at the moment.

As was the custom in the olden times of the pensionnaires of the Villa Medici, we lodged in Naples at the Casa Combi, an old house overlooking the Quay Santa Lucia. The fifth floor was reserved for us. It was an old ruin with a pink rough-cast front and windows framed in mouldings shaped in small figures and cleverly painted, like those one sees all over Italy as soon as one crosses the Var.

A vast room held our three beds. As for the dressing room and the rest, they were on the balcony, where, according to the local custom, we hung our clothes to dry.

In order to travel as comfortably as possible, we had rigged ourselves out at Rome with three suits of white flannel with blue stripes.

Risum teneatis, as that delightful poet Horace would have said. First, listen to this.

Massenet at Egreville

From the moment of our arrival at the station in Naples we were watched with surprising perseverance by the gendarmes. In addition, the passersby observed us with the utmost astonishment. We were intensely curious and wondered what the reason was for all this. We did not have long to wait. Our landlady, Marietta, told us that the Neapolitan convicts wore almost exactly the same costume. The laughter which greeted this revelation led us to complete the resemblance. So we went to the Café Royal in the Piazza S. Ferdinando, the three of us dragging our right legs as if they were fastened to a ball and chain as the convicts were.

We almost lived in the galleries of the Borbonico Museum during our first days in Naples. The most wonderful of the discoveries in the ruins of Herculanum, Pompeii, and their neighbor Stabies had been placed there. We were astonished at it all, enraptured, charmed by endless and ever new discoveries.

In passing I must recall our dutiful ascent of Vesuvius, whose plume of smoke we could see in the distance. We came back carrying our burned shoes in our hands and with our feet wrapped in flannel which we had bought at Torre del Greco.

We took our meals at Naples on the seashore on the Quay Santa Lucia, almost opposite our house. For twelve grani, about eight sous, we had an exquisite soup of shellfish, fish fried in an oil which had been used for that purpose for two or three years at least, and a glass of Capri wine.

Then, there were walks to Castellamare at the end of the Gulf of Naples, where we enjoyed a wonderful view; and to Sorrento so rich in orange trees that the arms of the city are interwoven in the form of a crown of orange leaves. At Sorrento we saw where Tasso was born—the famous Italian poet, the immortal author of "Jerusalem Delivered."

A simple terra cotta bust decorates the front of this half ruined house! Thence to Amalfi, once almost the rival of Venice in the size of its commerce.

If Napoleon got the itch through handling the gun sponge of a dirty artilleryman, we owe it to the truth to state that the morning after we passed the night in the place all three of us were covered with lice. We had to have our heads shaved, which added to our resemblance to convicts.

We were somewhat consoled for this adventure by sailing to Capri. We left Amalfi at four o'clock in the morning, but we did not reach Capri until ten at night. The island is delightful and the views bewitching. The top of Mount Solaro is 1800 feet above the sea and about nine and a half miles around. The view is one of the most beautiful and extensive in all Italy.

We were overtaken by a frightful storm on our way to Capri. The boat was loaded with a large quantity of oranges and the wild waves swept over everything to the great despair of the sailors who outshouted each other in calling on St. Joseph, the patron saint of Naples.

There is a pretty legend that St. Joseph, grieved by the departure of Jesus and the Virgin Mary for Heaven, ordered his Son to come back to him. Jesus obeyed and came back with all the saints in Paradise. The Virgin came back, too, to the conjugal roof escorted by eleven thousand virgins. When the Lord saw Paradise depopulated in this way and not wanting to put St. Joseph in the wrong, he declared that the latter was the stronger and so Heaven was repopulated by his permission. The veneration of the Neapolitans for St. Joseph is surprising, as the following detail illustrates.

In the Eighteenth Century the streets of Naples were hardly safe, and it was dangerous to pass through them at night. The king had lanterns placed at the worst corners to light the passersby, but the birbanti broke them as they found they interfered with their nocturnal deeds. Whereupon some one was struck with the idea of placing an image of St. Joseph beside each lantern, and thereafter they were respected to the great joy of the people.