and his hair on end in the sweat of death. His eyes remained open and
menacing. Vampa approached the corpse, and recognized Cucumetto. From
the day on which the bandit had been saved by the two young peasants, he
had been enamoured of Teresa, and had sworn she should be his. From that
time he had watched them, and profiting by the moment when her lover had
left her alone, had carried her off, and believed he at length had her
in his power, when the ball, directed by the unerring skill of the young
herdsman, had pierced his heart. Vampa gazed on him for a moment
without betraying the slightest emotion; while, on the contrary, Teresa,
shuddering in every limb, dared not approach the slain ruffian but
by degrees, and threw a hesitating glance at the dead body over the
shoulder of her lover. Suddenly Vampa turned toward his mistress:--'Ah,'
said he--'good, good! You are dressed; it is now my turn to dress
myself.'
"Teresa was clothed from head to foot in the garb of the Count of
San-Felice's daughter. Vampa took Cucumetto's body in his arms and
conveyed it to the grotto, while in her turn Teresa remained outside.
If a second traveller had passed, he would have seen a strange thing,--a
shepherdess watching her flock, clad in a cashmere grown, with ear-rings
and necklace of pearls, diamond pins, and buttons of sapphires,
emeralds, and rubies. He would, no doubt, have believed that he had
returned to the times of Florian, and would have declared, on reaching
Paris, that he had met an Alpine shepherdess seated at the foot of
the Sabine Hill. At the end of a quarter of an hour Vampa quitted the
grotto; his costume was no less elegant than that of Teresa. He wore
a vest of garnet-colored velvet, with buttons of cut gold; a silk
waistcoat covered with embroidery; a Roman scarf tied round his neck; a
cartridge-box worked with gold, and red and green silk; sky-blue velvet
breeches, fastened above the knee with diamond buckles; garters of
deerskin, worked with a thousand arabesques, and a hat whereon hung
ribbons of all colors; two watches hung from his girdle, and a splendid
poniard was in his belt. Teresa uttered a cry of admiration. Vampa in
this attire resembled a painting by Leopold Robert, or Schnetz. He had
assumed the entire costume of Cucumetto. The young man saw the effect
produced on his betrothed, and a smile of pride passed over his
lips.--'Now,' he said to Teresa, 'are you ready to share my
fortune, whatever it may be?'--'Oh, yes!' exclaimed the young girl
enthusiastically.--'And follow me wherever I go?'--'To the world's
end.'--'Then take my arm, and let us on; we have no time to lose.'--The
young girl did so without questioning her lover as to where he was
conducting her, for he appeared to her at this moment as handsome,
proud, and powerful as a god. They went towards the forest, and soon
entered it. We need scarcely say that all the paths of the mountain were
known to Vampa; he therefore went forward without a moment's hesitation,
although there was no beaten track, but he knew his path by looking at
the trees and bushes, and thus they kept on advancing for nearly an hour
and a half. At the end of this time they had reached the thickest of the
forest. A torrent, whose bed was dry, led into a deep gorge. Vampa took
this wild road, which, enclosed between two ridges, and shadowed by the
tufted umbrage of the pines, seemed, but for the difficulties of its
descent, that path to Avernus of which Virgil speaks. Teresa had become
alarmed at the wild and deserted look of the plain around her, and
pressed closely against her guide, not uttering a syllable; but as she
saw him advance with even step and composed countenance, she endeavored
to repress her emotion. Suddenly, about ten paces from them, a man
advanced from behind a tree and aimed at Vampa.--'Not another step,' he
said, 'or you are a dead man.'--'What, then,' said Vampa, raising his
hand with a gesture of disdain, while Teresa, no longer able to restrain
her alarm, clung closely to him, 'do wolves rend each other?'--'Who
are you?' inquired the sentinel.--'I am Luigi Vampa, shepherd of
the San-Felice farm.'--'What do you want?'--'I would speak with your
companions who are in the glade at Rocca Bianca.'--'Follow me, then,'
said the sentinel; 'or, as you know your way, go first.'--Vampa smiled
disdainfully at this precaution on the part of the bandit, went before
Teresa, and continued to advance with the same firm and easy step as
before. At the end of ten minutes the bandit made them a sign to stop.
The two young persons obeyed. Then the bandit thrice imitated the cry of
a crow; a croak answered this signal.--'Good!' said the sentry, 'you may
now go on.'--Luigi and Teresa again set forward; as they went on
Teresa clung tremblingly to her lover at the sight of weapons and the
glistening of carbines through the trees. The retreat of Rocca Bianca
was at the top of a small mountain, which no doubt in former days
had been a volcano--an extinct volcano before the days when Remus and
Romulus had deserted Alba to come and found the city of Rome. Teresa
and Luigi reached the summit, and all at once found themselves in the
presence of twenty bandits. 'Here is a young man who seeks and wishes
to speak to you,' said the sentinel.--'What has he to say?' inquired
the young man who was in command in the chief's absence.--'I wish to
say that I am tired of a shepherd's life,' was Vampa's reply.--'Ah,
I understand,' said the lieutenant; 'and you seek admittance into our
ranks?'--'Welcome!' cried several bandits from Ferrusino, Pampinara,
and Anagni, who had recognized Luigi Vampa.--'Yes, but I came to ask
something more than to be your companion.'--'And what may that be?'
inquired the bandits with astonishment.--'I come to ask to be your
captain,' said the young man. The bandits shouted with laughter.
'And what have you done to aspire to this honor?' demanded the
lieutenant.--'I have killed your chief, Cucumetto, whose dress I now
wear; and I set fire to the villa San-Felice to procure a wedding-dress
for my betrothed.' An hour afterwards Luigi Vampa was chosen captain,
vice Cucumetto deceased."
"Well, my dear Albert," said Franz, turning towards his friend; "what
think you of citizen Luigi Vampa?"
"I say he is a myth," replied Albert, "and never had an existence."
"And what may a myth be?" inquired Pastrini.
"The explanation would be too long, my dear landlord," replied Franz.
"And you say that Signor Vampa exercises his profession at this moment
in the environs of Rome?"
"And with a boldness of which no bandit before him ever gave an
example."
"Then the police have vainly tried to lay hands on him?"
"Why, you see, he has a good understanding with the shepherds in the
plains, the fishermen of the Tiber, and the smugglers of the coast. They
seek for him in the mountains, and he is on the waters; they follow him
on the waters, and he is on the open sea; then they pursue him, and he
has suddenly taken refuge in the islands, at Giglio, Guanouti, or Monte
Cristo; and when they hunt for him there, he reappears suddenly at
Albano, Tivoli, or La Riccia."
"And how does he behave towards travellers?"
"Alas! his plan is very simple. It depends on the distance he may be
from the city, whether he gives eight hours, twelve hours, or a day
wherein to pay their ransom; and when that time has elapsed he allows
another hour's grace. At the sixtieth minute of this hour, if the
money is not forthcoming, he blows out the prisoner's brains with a
pistol-shot, or plants his dagger in his heart, and that settles the
account."
"Well, Albert," inquired Franz of his companion, "are you still disposed
to go to the Colosseum by the outer wall?"
"Quite so," said Albert, "if the way be picturesque." The clock struck
nine as the door opened, and a coachman appeared. "Excellencies," said
he, "the coach is ready."
"Well, then," said Franz, "let us to the Colosseum."
"By the Porta del Popolo or by the streets, your excellencies?"
"By the streets, morbleu, by the streets!" cried Franz.
"Ah, my dear fellow," said Albert, rising, and lighting his third cigar,
"really, I thought you had more courage." So saying, the two young men
went down the staircase, and got into the carriage.
Chapter 34. The Colosseum.
Franz had so managed his route, that during the ride to the Colosseum
they passed not a single ancient ruin, so that no preliminary impression
interfered to mitigate the colossal proportions of the gigantic building
they came to admire. The road selected was a continuation of the Via
Sistina; then by cutting off the right angle of the street in which
stands Santa Maria Maggiore and proceeding by the Via Urbana and
San Pietro in Vincoli, the travellers would find themselves directly
opposite the Colosseum. This itinerary possessed another great
advantage,--that of leaving Franz at full liberty to indulge his deep
reverie upon the subject of Signor Pastrini's story, in which his
mysterious host of Monte Cristo was so strangely mixed up. Seated with
folded arms in a corner of the carriage, he continued to ponder over
the singular history he had so lately listened to, and to ask himself
an interminable number of questions touching its various circumstances
without, however, arriving at a satisfactory reply to any of them. One
fact more than the rest brought his friend "Sinbad the Sailor" back
to his recollection, and that was the mysterious sort of intimacy that
seemed to exist between the brigands and the sailors; and Pastrini's
account of Vampa's having found refuge on board the vessels of smugglers
and fishermen, reminded Franz of the two Corsican bandits he had found
supping so amicably with the crew of the little yacht, which had even
deviated from its course and touched at Porto-Vecchio for the sole
purpose of landing them. The very name assumed by his host of Monte
Cristo and again repeated by the landlord of the Hotel de Londres,
abundantly proved to him that his island friend was playing his
philanthropic part on the shores of Piombino, Civita-Vecchio, Ostia, and
Gaeta, as on those of Corsica, Tuscany, and Spain; and further, Franz
bethought him of having heard his singular entertainer speak both
of Tunis and Palermo, proving thereby how largely his circle of
acquaintances extended.
But however the mind of the young man might be absorbed in these
reflections, they were at once dispersed at the sight of the dark
frowning ruins of the stupendous Colosseum, through the various openings
of which the pale moonlight played and flickered like the unearthly
gleam from the eyes of the wandering dead. The carriage stopped near the
Meta Sudans; the door was opened, and the young men, eagerly alighting,
found themselves opposite a cicerone, who appeared to have sprung up
from the ground, so unexpected was his appearance.
The usual guide from the hotel having followed them, they had paid two
conductors, nor is it possible, at Rome, to avoid this abundant supply
of guides; besides the ordinary cicerone, who seizes upon you directly
you set foot in your hotel, and never quits you while you remain in the
city, there is also a special cicerone belonging to each monument--nay,
almost to each part of a monument. It may, therefore, be easily imagined
there is no scarcity of guides at the Colosseum, that wonder of all
ages, which Martial thus eulogizes: "Let Memphis cease to boast the
barbarous miracles of her pyramids, and the wonders of Babylon be talked
of no more among us; all must bow to the superiority of the gigantic
labor of the Caesars, and the many voices of Fame spread far and wide
the surpassing merits of this incomparable monument."
As for Albert and Franz, they essayed not to escape from their
ciceronian tyrants; and, indeed, it would have been so much the more
difficult to break their bondage, as the guides alone are permitted to
visit these monuments with torches in their hands. Thus, then, the
young men made no attempt at resistance, but blindly and confidingly
surrendered themselves into the care and custody of their conductors.
Albert had already made seven or eight similar excursions to the
Colosseum, while his less favored companion trod for the first time in
his life the classic ground forming the monument of Flavius Vespasian;
and, to his credit be it spoken, his mind, even amid the glib loquacity
of the guides, was duly and deeply touched with awe and enthusiastic
admiration of all he saw; and certainly no adequate notion of these
stupendous ruins can be formed save by such as have visited them, and
more especially by moonlight, at which time the vast proportions of the
building appear twice as large when viewed by the mysterious beams of
a southern moonlit sky, whose rays are sufficiently clear and vivid to
light the horizon with a glow equal to the soft twilight of an eastern
clime. Scarcely, therefore, had the reflective Franz walked a hundred
steps beneath the interior porticoes of the ruin, than, abandoning
Albert to the guides (who would by no means yield their prescriptive
right of carrying their victims through the routine regularly laid down,
and as regularly followed by them, but dragged the unconscious visitor
to the various objects with a pertinacity that admitted of no appeal,
beginning, as a matter of course, with the Lions' Den, and finishing
with Caesar's "Podium,"), to escape a jargon and mechanical survey
of the wonders by which he was surrounded, Franz ascended a
half-dilapidated staircase, and, leaving them to follow their monotonous
