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Four eye-witnesses have left us details of this strange scene of desolation, whilst only a few days after Mother Earth had brought forth this new mountain, one of them, the Spanish Viceroy of Naples, the valiant Don Pedro of Toledo, owned sufficient pluck and curiosity to make the ascent of the Monte Nuovo, still smoking hot and reeking of sulphur.
The King was coming in the course of the day along the same route. At every corner, at every bridge and roadside house, there were groups of peasants standing waiting to see Il padrone nuovo, the new sovereign and master. The children had flags in their little hands, and the cottagers had hung out their coloured bed- quilts, and the roadside crosses were decked out with flowers.
On the corner of the house of the Cartai, on the way from the Ponte Nuovo to S. Maria in Organo, in Verona, he painted a Madonna and S. Joseph in fresco, a work which was much extolled.
In it was seen the gloomy dungeon where Beatrice Cenci and others were incarcerated. The Harrises drove down the Borgo Nuovo to the church of St. Peter. Its approach is through a magnificent piazza ornamented on the right and left by two semicircular porticoes of 284 columns, which are surmounted by an entablature, and 192 statues, each eleven feet in height.
But on the eve of the 20th of August a strange and terrible scene was being enacted in the basement storey of one of the lateral towers of Castel Nuovo.
This was the sudden birth of the mountain still known as Monte Nuovo, or New Mountain, which was thrown up in the Campania near Avernus, on the spot formerly occupied by the Lucrine Lake. For about two years prior to this event the district had been disturbed by earthquakes, which on September 27 and 28, 1538, became almost continuous.
In fact, it soon became apparent that Corsica was too small a sphere for natures so able and masterful as those of Paoli and Napoleon Buonaparte. The first meeting of these two men must have been a scene of deep interest. It was on the fatal field of Ponte Nuovo. Napoleon doubtless came there in the spirit of true hero-worship.
A company of infantry was filing out of the castle of Sant' Angelo on to the bridge, where it was met by a dense multitude of people coming from the opposite direction. A squadron of mounted gendarmes came up from the Borgo Nuovo at the same moment, and half a dozen cabs were jammed in between the opposing masses of the soldiers and the people.
He made large sums and spent large sums, and his house was the scene of splendid entertainments. It still stands, not far from the Jesuits' church, but it is now the centre of a slum, and his large garden, which extended to the lagoon where the Fondamenta Nuovo now is, has been built over. Titian's place in art is high and unassailable.
Here occurred the meeting between the two great Corsicans, the man of ideas and the man of action. No doubt Paoli was anxious to win a family so important and a patriot so ardent. In any case, he invited the three young men to accompany him over the fatal battle-ground of Ponte Nuovo.
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