Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - VIII. Naples
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silent like a grave. Was it true that the nuns
entered through these gates wrapped in the shroud
of the dead and laid in a coffin, and that they
could never get out as long as they were alive?
Yes, it was quite true, the nuns had no
communication with the outer world. He himself
during his rare professional visits to the convent
was preceded by an old nun ringing a bell to warn
the nuns to shut themselves up in their cells.
Was it true what I had heard from Padre
Anselmo, their confessor, that the cloister-garden
was full of antique marbles?
Yes, he had noticed lots of fragments lying
about, he had been told that the convent stood
on the ruins of a Greek temple.
My colleague seemed to like to talk to me, he
said he had no friends in Naples, like all his
countrymen he hated and despised the Neapolitans.
What he had witnessed since the outbreak of the
cholera made him loathe them more than ever.
It was difficult not to believe that it was the
punishment of God that had fallen on their rotten
city. Sodom and Gomorrha were nothing
compared to Naples. Did I not see what was going
on in the poor quarters, in the streets, in the
infected houses, even in the churches while they
were praying to one saint and cursing another?
A frenzy of lust was sweeping all over Naples,
immorality and vice everywhere in the very face
of Death. Assaults on women had become so
frequent that no decent woman dared to leave
her house.
He did not seem to be afraid of the cholera, he
said he felt quite safe under the protection of the
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