Array Stendhal - The Roman Tales

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.

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