"Sciore limone Le voglio far mori de passione Zompa llari llira!" [Footnote: Neapolitan dialect.] Ha! I remembered now. When I had crawled out of the vault through the brigand's hole of entrance--when my heart had bounded with glad anticipations never to be realized--when I had believed in the worth of love and friendship--when I had seen the morning sun glittering on the sea, and had thought--poor fool!--that his long beams were like so many golden flags of joy hung up in heaven to symbolize the happiness of my release from death and my restoration to liberty--then--then I had heard a sailor's voice in the distance singing that "ritornello," and I had fondly imagined its impassioned lines were all for me! Hateful music--most bitter sweetness! I could have put my hands up to my ears to shut out the sound of it now that I thought of the time when I had heard it last! For then I had possessed a heart--a throbbing, passionate, sensitive thing--alive to every emotion of tenderness and affection--now that heart was dead and cold as a stone. Only its corpse went with me everywhere, weighing me down with itself to the strange grave it occupied, a grave wherein were also buried so many dear delusions--such plaintive regrets, such pleading memories, that surely it was no wonder their small ghosts arose and haunted me, saying, "Wilt thou not weep for this lost sweetness?" "Wilt thou not relent before such a remembrance?" or "Hast thou no desire for that past delight?" But to all such inward temptations my soul was deaf and inexorable; justice--stern, immutable justice was what I sought and what I meant to have.
May be you find it hard to understand the possibility of Scheming and carrying out so prolonged a vengeance as mine? If you that read these pages are English, I know it will seem to you well-nigh incomprehensible. The temperate blood of the northerner, combined with his open, unsuspicious nature, has, I admit, the advantage over us in matters of personal injury. An Englishman, so I hear, is incapable of nourishing a long and deadly resentment, even against an unfaithful wife--he is too indifferent, he thinks it not worth his while. But we Neapolitans, we can carry a "vendetta" through a life-time--ay, through generation after generation! This is bad, you say--immoral, unchristian. No doubt! We are more than half pagans at heart; we are as our country and our traditions have made us. It will need another visitation of Christ before we shall learn how to forgive those that despitefully use us. Such a doctrine seems to us a mere play upon words--a weak maxim only fit for children and priests. Besides, did Christ himself forgive Judas? The gospel does not say so!