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Updated: June 21, 2025
O mia santissima, mio amore no longer my saint for ever, my love no more so you were happy, I were happy. But there are clouds about you, though you know them not. Arthur had come to Naples by one of the boats of the Messagerie Impériale, and had come to share my little house at Posilipo. He brought with him kindest remembrances from Cecilia and from her sister.
The northwest side of the bay, keeping a general westerly direction, is very uneven, with headlands, deep bays, and outlying islands. First comes the promontory of Posilipo, pierced by two tunnels, partly natural and partly Greek and Roman work, above the entrance of one of which is the tomb of Virgil, let us believe; then a beautiful bay, the shore of which is incrusted with classic ruins.
Passing along the noisy thronged street of the Chiaja and plunging thence into the chill gloomy recesses of the ancient grotto of Posilipo, we emerge at its further side into a new world, as it were, into a district where “there is scarcely a spot which is not identified with the poetical mythology of Greece, or associated with some name familiar in the history of Rome.” In truth, the headland of Posilipo presents a wonderful landmark in the history of Naples, for it forms a barrier between the busy world of to-day and the departed civilisation of the ancients: at the latter end of this tunnel, the fierce life and movement of a great commercial city; at its western exit, a tract of land teeming with recollections of the glorious past.
Gregory bore me away to Posilipo, where I found Arthur quite worn out with the fatigue and excitement of the day. Those influences retarded his recovery for a week or two, but before the autumn came he was well and strong again. I begged hard of Mr. Gregory and the Advocate, and at last they came to agree with me, and to this day Arthur does not know of my suspicions of him.
The villa we lived in was at a short distance from and above the town, quite buried in groves of oranges and lemons, beyond which lay the sea, generally calm and blue, sometimes stormy; to our left the islands of Ischia and Procida, the Capo Miseno, with Baia, Pozzuoli, and Posilipo; exactly opposite to us, Naples, then Vesuvius, and all the little towns on that coast, and lastly, to our right, this wonderful panorama was bounded by the fine cliffs of the Monte Santangelo.
My last news is that my old patron, at the age of fifty-five, has proposed to Miss Grammont, and that she has not refused him. If you will look into the little churchyard at Posilipo you will find a flat marble slab with a name on it, and no more. The name it bears is that of Alberto Lezzi, who but for his early death would have been one of the great legal orators of Europe.
I sleep well at night, and during the day I eat with fair appetite. Some of my belongings have been brought from Posilipo here; amongst them a small mirror. I am so much a stranger to myself in this new-found calm and indifference, that I am almost surprised to find myself unaltered outwardly. I am a little paler than common that is all.
But it is certainly refreshing, after wandering in an unreal Sicily and an imaginary Arcadia, and listening to shepherds discourse of the abuses of the Roman Curia, to dive into the waters of the bay of Naples, or wanton in fancy along its sunlit shore from the low rocks of Baiae to the sheer cliffs of Sorrento, and to feel that, even though Jacopo was no Neapolitan fisher-boy, and Carmosina no nymph of Posilipo, yet the poet had at least before him the blue water and the dark rocks, and in his heart the love that formed the theme of his song .
They found themselves together on the threshold; and Odo, recalling to the other the circumstances of their first meeting, proposed that they should dismiss their carriages and regain the city on foot. De Crucis readily consented; and they were soon descending the hill of Posilipo.
As the day waned, a heavy cloud hid the sun, and so let down the light that the waters were a dark purple. Then the sun went behind Posilipo in a perfect blaze of scarlet, and all the sea was violet.
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