The Roman Tales - Susan Ashe

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trees clothe an extinct volcano, was the scene of Marco Sciarra’s final exploits. Travellers will tell you that this is the most magnificent part of the Roman plain and that its sombre aspect seems made for tragedy. Its dark foliage crowns the summit of Monte Albano.

      A volcanic eruption many centuries before the founding of Rome gave birth to this imposing mountain. It emerged from a wide plain which then stretched from the Apennines to the sea. Monte Cavo, which rises from the gloomy shade of the Faggiola wood, is the highest point. The panorama extends from Terracina to Ostia and from Rome to Tivoli. Monte Albano, now decked out in palazzi, comprises Rome’s southern horizon, which is so instantly recognizable to travellers.

      A Blackfriars monastery on top of Monte Cavo has replaced the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, where the Latin peoples offered sacrifices and strengthened the bonds of a sort of religious federation. In a few hours, shaded by the branches of huge chestnut trees, the traveller will reach the great stones which are the remnants of the temple of Jupiter. But beneath the dark foliage, so welcome in this climate, even the modern traveller, fearing brigands, nervously eyes the forest depths.

      On the summit of Monte Cavo, you may light a fire in the temple ruins to prepare a meal. West from this spot, the sea seems but a step or two away although it is really three of four leagues. You can glimpse tiny boats. Even with weak binoculars you can count the passengers on the Naples steamer. In every other direction, the view takes in the magnificent plain which, beyond Palestrina, is bordered in the east by the Apennines and to the north by St Peter’s and other great Roman buildings. Since Monte Cavo is not high, the eye can pick out every tiny detail of this superb landscape, which could dispense with any historical association were it not for the fact that each clump of trees, each section of ruined wall on the plain or on the hillside bears witness to a battle, recorded by Livy and famed for its patriotism and courage.

      To reach the remnants of the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, whose huge stones now wall the Blackfriars’ garden, we take the triumphal way trodden by the first kings of Rome. The road is paved with regularly cut slabs. Long stretches have been found in the middle of the Faggiola forest.

      Inside the rim of the extinct crater, which is five or six miles round, is the lovely lake of Albano. Here, deeply embedded in the lava rock, stood Alba, the forerunner of Rome, which the Romans destroyed in the days of the early kings. Its ruins are still here. Several centuries later, a quarter of a league from Alba, modern Albano grew up on the flank of the mountain facing the sea. But the town is separated from the lake by a curtain of rocks, so that the one is hidden from the other. Seen from the plain, Albano’s white buildings rise out of the dark foliage of the forest, much loved by brigands and by writers, that clads every side of the volcanic mountain.

      Now a town of five or six thousand inhabitants, Albano had only three thousand in 1540, when the powerful Campireali family, whose ill-fated tale we are about to tell, was among the leading ranks of the nobility.

      This story has been translated from two long manuscripts, one Roman, the other Florentine. At my peril I have ventured to reproduce their style, which is akin to that of our old legends. The more refined style of the present age would, I think, be out of keeping with the authors’ observations and the events they describe. They were writing in about 1598. For them and for myself, I beg the reader’s indulgence.

      II

      After recording numerous tragic stories, says the author of the Florentine manuscript, he will end with the one he found the most painful. This is the tale of the notorious Elena de’ Campireali, Abbess of the Convent of the Visitation in Castro, whose trial and death gave Roman and Neapolitan society so much food for gossip.

      In 1555, while brigands roamed the outskirts of Rome, magistrates were in the pay of powerful families. In the year 1572, when the abbess’s trial took place, Pope Gregory XIII came to the throne of St Peter. This holy pontiff possessed all the apostolic virtues but his civic rule could be accused of certain weaknesses. He neither chose honest judges nor controlled the brigands; he fretted over crimes but felt unable to punish them. He believed that in inflicting the death penalty he was taking on a fearful responsibility.

      As a consequence, the roads to the eternal city were infested by an endless host of brigands. To travel safely one had to befriend the outlaws. The Faggiola forest, which straddles the road from Albano to Naples, had for many years been the headquarters of a force hostile to His Holiness, and often Rome had to make treaties, as if with a foreign power, with Marco Sciarra, one of the kings of the forest. The brigands’ strength lay in the fact that they were liked by their peasant neighbours.

      Elena de’ Campireali was born in 1542 in the lovely town of Albano, very near the brigands’ stamping ground. Her father was the area’s richest man, and as such he had married Vittoria Carafa, who owned large estates in the Kingdom of Naples. Vittoria was a model of prudence and good sense. In spite of her intelligence, however, she could not stem the downfall of her family. Unusually, the calamities which are the sad subject of this tale cannot be blamed on any of its characters. Elena’s great beauty and tender heart, which left her vulnerable, excuse Giulio Branciforte, her lover. Equally, because of his complete lack of common sense, the Bishop of Castro, Monsignor Cittadini is to a certain extent exonerated. He owed his swift advance in ecclesiastical honours to his honest conduct and above all to the noblest bearing and most handsome face that anyone could hope to encounter. It has been said that to see him was to love him.

      A holy monk of the Monastery of Monte Cavo, who was frequently found in his cell levitating several feet off the ground when only divine grace could have kept him in this extraordinary position, had told Signor de’ Campireali that his family would die with him and that he would have but two children, both of whom would meet violent deaths. It was owing to this prophecy that Signor de’ Campireali could not marry in his own region but went to seek his fortune in Naples, where he had the luck to find great wealth and a wife capable by her own wits of changing his ill-starred destiny, if such a thing were possible. Signor de’ Campireali was an honest man and he made many charitable donations, but, lacking in cleverness, he withdrew from Rome and ended by spending almost the whole year in his palazzo in Albano. He devoted himself to farming his lands, which lay on the rich plain between the town and the sea. Thanks to his wife, he gave his son Fabio, a young man proud of his birth, the best possible education. He did the same for his daughter Elena, who was a miracle of beauty, as can still be seen by her portrait in the Farnese collection.

      In this picture, Elena’s face is oval-shaped, with a high forehead and dark blonde hair. She has a glint in her large, deeply expressive eyes, and her chestnut brows form perfect arcs. Her lips are fine, and her mouth looks as if it were drawn by Correggio. Seen among the portraits hanging in the Farnese, she has the air of a queen. A cheerful look and regal bearing are not often found together.

      Elena spent eight whole years as a boarder in the Convent of the Visitation in the town of Castro, which no longer exists but where in those days the daughters of most Roman princes were sent. She then came home, but on leaving the convent she made it the gift of a magnificent chalice. As soon as she returned to Albano, her father, by means of a large retaining fee, had the renowned poet Cechino, then a very old man, brought from Rome. He embellished Elena’s memory with the most beautiful verses by the divine Vergil, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Dante.

      Elena seems to have known Latin. The poems she learned spoke of love, the passionate love that takes sustenance from great sacrifices, lives wrapped in mystery, and always goes hand in hand with terrible tragedy.

      Such was the love Giulio Branciforte inspired in Elena, then scarcely seventeen years old. A neighbour of hers, he lived in a humble house in the mountains. A quarter of a league from the town, it stood among the ruins of Alba on the edge of the hundred-and-fifty-foot precipice carpeted with greenery that circled the lake.

      Giulio had little in his favour but a cheerful spirit and the carefree way in which he bore his poverty. His face was expressive without being handsome. He was known to have fought bravely under the command of Prince Colonna and among his bravi in two or three dangerous enterprises. In spite of his poverty, in spite of a lack of good looks, Giulio Branciforte – according to the young

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