The people of Aquila, as indeed you may well know, of most towns in Southern Italy, have the habit of--consequently a peculiar talent for--earthquakes. They know how to deal with them, and are seldom caught unprepared. Two hundred yards outside the town gate, there is half a square mile of table-land on the summit of a hill--a market-place in days of ease, a harbor of refuge in the urgency of peril. From the first dropping of the earth-ball from the hand of their guardian saint, the most far-sighted among the inhabitants had been busy pitching their tents. The whole population--those, that is, who had escaped unscathed by flying tiles and chimney-pots--were now swarming there, pulling, pushing, hauling, and hammering away for very life: with women fainting, children screeching, Capuchins preaching. It was like a little rehearsal of doomsday. Don Marzio, a prudent housekeeper, had the latch-key of a private door at the back of the garden. He threw it open--not without a misgiving at the moss-grown wall overhead. That night the very stars did not seem to him sufficiently firm-nailed to the firmament! His family and dependents trooped after him, eager to follow. Rosalbina looked back--at one who was left behind. Don Marzio felt he owed me at least one word of leave-taking. He hemmed twice, came back two steps, and gave me a feverish shake of the hand. "I am heartily sorry for you, my boy," he cried. "A _fuoruscito_, as I may say, a bird-in-the-bush--you dare not show your nose outside the door. You would not compromise yourself alone, you know, but all of us and our friends; we must leave you--safe enough here, I dare say," with a stolen glance at the Ursuline spire, "but--you see--imperative duties--head of a family--take care of the females--and so, God bless you!" With this he left me there, under the deadly shade of the steeple--deadlier to him than the upas-tree; ordered his little household band out, and away they filed, one by one, the head of the family manfully closing the rear....