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I had not time to finish the word, she had not
time to draw back, my arms had closed round
her, I felt the tumultuous beating of her heart
against my heart.
“Pietà!” she murmured.
Suddenly she pointed towards the bed and sprang
out of the room with a cry of terror. The eyes of the
old Abbess were looking straight at me, wide-open,
terrible, menacing. I bent over her, I thought
I heard a faint fluttering of the heart. Was she
dead or alive? Could those terrible eyes see, had
they seen? Would those lips ever speak again?
I dared not look at those eyes, I pulled the sheet
over her face and sprang from the cell, from the
Sepolte Vive, never to return there any more.
The next day I fainted in Strada Piliero.
When I regained consciousness I was lying in a
cab with a terrified policeman sitting on the seat
opposite me. We were on our way to Santa
Maddalena, the cholera hospital.
I have described elsewhere how that drive
ended, how three weeks later my stay in Naples
ended with a glorious sail across the bay in
Sorrento’s best sailing-boat together with a
dozen stranded Capri fishermen, how we lay a
whole unforgettable day off the Marina of Capri
unable to land on account of the quarantine.
I took good care not to describe in ‘The
Letters from a Mourning City’ what happened
in the convent of the Sepolte Vive. I have
never dared to tell it to anybody, not even to my
faithful friend Doctor Norstrom, who was keeping
a catalogue of most of the shortcomings of my
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