Maitre Adam of Calabria, Chapters VIII - X [pp. 565-574]

1853.] Maitre adam, of Caibria. 571
and the population fled: there had been in with the idea that his father was, perhaps,
the night an earthquake. Marco Brandi had among the victims, and looking every where
slept in a secluded inn, three leagues from for some one'who could give informaCosenza. While in his first doze, he had tion concerning him. But the streets were
felt the bed move, and had supposed it a deserted. Old Placido Brandi lived in a
dream. In the morning he found himself in quarter opposite that by which his son had
the middle of the room, and as, at the same entered; so that the latter was compelled to
time, he saw daylight through the walls go to the other end of the town before learn.
which had been cracked in two or three pla- ing anything. On arriving at the little stream
ces, he comprehended what had happened. which flowed there, he saw that it was dried
As for the proprietor of the inn, who slept up, and that in drying up it had left its bed
less profoundly than his guest, as it appeared, bare. Workmen were digging furiously in
he had fled at the earliest shock and had left this bed in many places, under the direction
Marco Brandi master of the house. Marco of the savans of the town, who had read in
Brandi, who would have stopped, without Jornandes that Alaric, confined in three
the least hesitation, a traveller or a diligence coffins-the first of gold, the second of silpassing along the highway, would have con- ver, and the third of bronze-had been busidered it unworthy of an honest brigand to ried in the bed of the stream which had
go out of an inn without paying his reckon- been diverted by his soldiers; then, the ining. He calculated, therefore, the worth of terment being completed, they had permitthe supper and the bed they had given him, ted the Busento to resume its course. This
not forgetting some carlins for the maid, left time it was not the hand of man which had
the whole in the most conspicuous part of undertaken this gigantic work; it was God
the room, and departed from the house not who had breathed uponl the river, and the
without some anxiety as to the effects which river had disappeared. Marco Brandi aphad been produced at Cosenza by the shock proached the workmen to inquire for what
whlch had passed over him so quietly that they were searching there, whilst the woundhe had not beenf aware of it, as we have ed victims, entombed under the ruins of the
said, until the following morning. Indeed, houses, waited in vain for assistance; they
in proportion as he proceeded, his fears be- replied that they sought the body of Alaric,
came more and more alarming-for all the who had been buried for fourteen hundred
houses which he passed on the way showed years. Marco Brandi thought the earthquake
signs, more or less terrible, of the occurrence. had made fools of the Cosenzans, and kept
But it was much worse when he reached the on his way. About two hundred paces furssummit- of the mountain which overlooks ther on, he saw another group composed of
Cosenza on the side of Martorano, and when an old man, three or four monks and a dozen
he could take in, at a glance, the whole dis- Sisters of Charity. These were excavating
aster which had extended from one end of at a house from which could be heard the
the village to the other with all the va- most dreadful groans. Marco approached
riety and accidents of caprice. Thus, in the and recognized his father in the old man
middle of a street, entirely in ruins, one who directed the labor. The two Brandi
house stood on end; another, of which the threw themselves into each other's arms;
front had fronted north, had turned round then each took a pickaxe and set actively to
and now looked towards the south; this one work: they had the gratification of rescuing
had entirely disappeared, swallowed up in a a woman and two children.
chasm which had closed over it; that one As for the workmen at the Busento, they
was held up by frail props and tottered like were in a tumult of joy: they had hapa drunken man; while, from the midst of pened to find a little bronze horse worth at
the rubbish came human groans and the cries the most a crown.
of animals, plaintive enough to freeze the Marco Brandi and his father hastened to
blood in the heart of the bravest. another house, while the savans continued
Marco Brandi advanced to the middle of their digging. All day, the one worked to
this scene of desolation, his heart oppressed save the living, and the other to rob a corpse.
1853.]
.Maitre /dam, of Calabria.
571