Naples, Past and PresentNorway, Arthur H. (Arthur Hamilton)
History
Naples, Past and Present
Norway, Arthur H. (Arthur Hamilton)
Naples (Italy) -- Description and travel
If, however, the Viceroy took no steps to repress the rising by force
of arms, it is not to be supposed that he lay idle in the Church of
San Luigi grasping the horns of the altar. By no means. On the
contrary, Don Gabriele Tontoli, an eye-witness of these disasters,
assures us that the great man in this crisis, while the mob were
battering and howling at the doors of the church, forgot nothing which
was due to his exalted position, but climbed out nobly on the roof of
the church and addressed the people in affectionate accents, seeking
to draw them back to the duteous loyalty which they seemed for the
moment to have forgotten. Oddly enough these paternal admonitions were
little heeded by the mob, who, if they spared a look for the pleading
Viceroy on the roof, only roared the louder and battered at the door
the harder. Indeed, there can be little doubt that they would have
battered down the door ere long, and the Viceroy's position was
growing so perilous that Don Gabriele compares it aptly with that of
the innocent Andromeda bound to the rock and awaiting the onset of the
sea monster. But Perseus arrived, as in the classical tale, just in
the nick of time, wearing the odd garb of a cardinal of the Roman
Catholic Church. In fact, he was no other than the Archbishop of
Naples, Cardinal Ascanio Filamarino, a man destined to play a
considerable part in the coming troubles.
Perseus took in the situation at a glance, and being unluckily
unprovided with a Gorgon's head with which to turn the monster into
stone, he saw no other way of saving the rhetorical Andromeda
discanting eloquently on the roof than by translating some of his
promises into actions. Taking his stand, therefore, on the steps of
the church, he sent up word through the grid that the Viceroy must
instantly make out an order for the abolition of the gabelle and send
it down to him. The Viceroy sent it without delay, and the Cardinal,
who appears to have been one of the very few men of mark in Naples
possessing any credit with the mob, produced an instant sensation by
waving the paper in the air. With a singular good judgment he allowed
no one to see it on that spot, but getting into his coach, still
waving the document high above his head, he drew off the people from
the church, and so opened a way for the escape of the Viceroy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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