“At intervals sudden quakes shook the ground to a great depth. The shocks were so violent that street pavements were torn from their beds and leaped into the air. The masonry of wells flew out from below the surface in one piece, like a small tower thrown up from the earth. When the ground rose and split open, houses, people, and animals were instantly swallowed up; then, the ground subsiding again, the crevice closed once more, and, without leaving a vestige, everything disappeared, crushed between the two walls of the abyss as they drew together. Some time afterward, when, after the disaster, excavations were made in order to recover valuable lost objects, the workmen observed that the buried buildings and all that they contained were one compact mass, so violent had been the pressure of this sort of vise formed by the two edges of the closed-up crevice. “The number of persons who perished in these terrible circumstances is estimated at eighty thousand. “Most of these victims were buried alive under the ruins of their houses; others were consumed by fires that sprang up in these ruins after each shock; others, fleeing across the country, were swallowed up in the abysses that opened under their feet. “The sight of such calamities ought to have awakened pity in the hearts of barbarians. And yet—who would believe it?—except for a very few acts of heroism, the conduct of the people was most infamous. The Calabrian peasants ran to the towns, not to give help, but to pillage. Without any concern about the danger, they traversed the streets in the midst of burning walls and clouds of dust, kicking and robbing the victims even before the breath had left their bodies.” “Miserable creatures!” cried Jules. “Horrid rascals! Ah, if I had only been there!” “If you had been there, what would you have done, my poor child? There were plenty there with as good hearts and better fists than yours, but they could do nothing.” “Are those Calabrians very wicked?” asked Emile. “Wherever education has not been introduced there are brutal natures that, in time of trouble, spring up, no one knows whence, and frighten the world with their atrocities. Another story will teach you more of the Calabrian peasants.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER LXVII SHALL WE KILL THEM BOTH? UNCLE PAUL went up to his room and came back with a book. “What I am going to read to you is from a mounted artilleryman, more expert in the art of the pen than in that of the cannon. At the beginning of this century a French army occupied Calabria. Our gunner belonged to it. Here is a letter he wrote to his cousin: “‘One day I was traveling in Calabria. It is a country of bad people who love no one and have a special spite against the French. It would take too long to tell you why; enough that they mortally hate us and one is sure of a bad time if one falls into their hands.