September 3, 2025 • 12 mins
In the enchanting backdrop of Rome, a group of artists is immersed in their creative pursuits. But when one of them retreats to a secluded villa for solitude, his friends are drawn to visit. What they discover is unsettling‚a mere ‚òshadowy likeness‚ of Marcello, who has inexplicably taken up sleepwalking. As they delve deeper into the mystery, a strange woman emerges from the shadows of the grounds each night. Who is she, and what secrets does she hold? - Summary by Newgatenovelist
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Section two of A Mystery of the Campania by Anne Crawford.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Part one
Martyr Detaire's account of what happened at the Vigna Marziali,
Segment B. The eight days went by sooner than I
(00:22):
had thought they would, and Thursday came bright and sunny
for my expedition. At one o'clock I descended into the
Piazza di Spagna and made a bargain with a man
who had a well fed horse, remembering how dearly Marcella's
want of good sense had cost me a week ago,
and we drove off at a good pace to the
Vigna Marziali. As I was almost forgetting to say that
(00:46):
it was cold, my heart was beating, though I did
not know why I should feel so much emotion. When
we reached the iron gate, the guardiano answered my ring directly,
and I had no sooner set foot in the long
flat walk. Then I saw Marcello hastening to meet me.
I knew you would come, he said, drawing my arm
(01:07):
within his, and so he walked toward the little gray house,
which had a sort of portico and several balconies. And
a sun dial on its front. There were grated windows
down to the ground floor, and the place, to my relief,
looked safe and habitable. He told me that the man
did not sleep there but in a little hut down
(01:29):
toward the campagna, and that he Marcelo, walked himself in
safely every night, which I was also relieved to know.
What do you get to eat? Said I? Oh, I
have goat's flesh and dried beans and polenta with peccorino cheese,
and there is plenty of black bread and sour wine.
He answered smilingly. You see, I am not starved. Do
(01:53):
not overwork yourself, Morvieux, I said, you are worth more
than your opera ever will be. Do I look over worked,
he said, turning his face to me in the broad
out door light. He seemed a little offended at my
saying that about his opera, and I was foolish to
do it. I examined his face critically, and he looked
(02:15):
at me half defiantly. No, not yet, I answered, rather unwillingly,
for I could not say that he did. But there
was a restless inward look in his eyes, and an
almost imperceptible shadow lay around them. It seemed to me
as though the full temples had grown slightly hollow, and
a sort of faint mist lay over his beauty, making
(02:38):
it seem strange and far off. We were standing before
the door, and he pushed it open, the guardiano following
us with slow, loud, resounding steps. Here is my paradise,
said Marcello, and we entered the house, which was, like
all the others of its kind, a hall with stuccobar reliefs,
(03:00):
and a stairway adorned with antique fragments gave access to
the upper rooms. Marcellow ran up the steps lightly, and
I heard him lock a door somewhere above and draw
out the key. Then he came and met me on
the landing. This, he said, is my work room, and
he threw open a low door. The key was in
(03:21):
the lock, so this room could not be the one
I heard him close. Tell me I shall not write
like an angel here, he cried. I was so dazzled
by the flood of bright sunshine after the dusk of
the passage that I blinked like an owl at first,
And then I saw a large room, quite bare except
(03:42):
for a rough table and chair, the chair covered with
manuscript music you are looking for the furniture, he said, laughing,
hit his outside. Look here, and he drew me to
a rickety door of worm eaten wood and coarse greenish glass,
and flow it open on to a rusty iron balcony.
(04:03):
He was right, the furniture was outside. That is to say,
a divine view met my eyes. The Sabine mountains, the
Alban Hills, the broad Campania with its medieval towers and
ruined aqueducts, and the open plain to the sea, all
this glowing and yet calm in the sunlight. No wonder
(04:25):
he could write. There the balcony ran round the corner
of the house, and to the right I looked down
upon an alley of alexes, ending in a grove of
tall laurel trees, very old. Apparently there were bits of
sculpture and some ancient sarcophagi standing gleaming among them. And
even from so high I could hear a little stream
(04:47):
of water pouring from an antique mask into a long
rough trough. I saw the brown guardiano digging at his
cabbages and onions, and I laughed to think that I
could fancy him a murderer. He had a little bag
of relics which dangled to and fro over his sunburned breast,
And he looked very innocent when he sat down upon
(05:08):
an old column to eat a piece of black bread
with an onion, which he had just pulled out of
the ground, slicing it with a knife, not at all
like a dagger. But I kept my thoughts to myself,
for Marcello would have laughed at them. We were standing together,
looking down at the man as he drank from his
hands at the running fountain, and Marcello now leaned over
(05:30):
the balcony and called out along oh e. The lazy
Guardiano looked up, nodded, and then got up slowly from
the stone, where he had been half kneeling to reach
the jet of water. We are going to dine, Marcello explained,
I have been waiting for you. Presently we heard the
(05:51):
man's heavy tread upon the stairs, and he entered, bearing
a strange meal in a basket. There came to light
peccorino cheese made from eyewe's milk, black bread of the
consistency of a stone, a great bowl of salad apparently
composed of weeds, and a sausage which filled the room.
With a strong smell of garlic. Then he disappeared and
(06:13):
came back with a dish full of ragged looking goat's flesh,
cooked together with a mass of smoking polenta. And I
am not sure that there was not oil in it.
I told you I lived well, and now you see,
said Marcello. It was a terrible meal, but I had
to eat it, and was glad to have some rough
(06:33):
sour wine to help me, which tasted of earth and roots.
When we had finished, I said, and your opera, how
are you getting on? Not a word about that? He cried.
You see how I have written, and he turned over
a heap of manuscript. But do not talk to me
about it. I will not lose my ideas in words.
(06:57):
This was not alike Marcello, who loved to discuss his work.
And I looked at him astonished. Come, he said, we
will go down into the garden and you shall tell
me about the comrades. What are they doing? Has Manya
found a model for his Clytemnestra. I humored him, as
(07:17):
I always did, and we sat upon the stone bench
behind the house, looking toward the Laurel Grove, talking of
the pictures and the students. I wanted to walk down
the e like saleh, but he stopped me. If you
are afraid of the damp, don't go down there. He said.
The place is like a vault. Let us stay here
(07:37):
and be thankful for this heavenly view. Well, let us
stay here, I answered, resigned. As Ever, he lit a
cigar and offered me one in silence. If he did
not care to talk, I could be still too. From
time to time he made some indifferent observation, and I
answered it in the same tone. It all, my most
(08:00):
seemed to me, as though we the old heart comrades,
had become strangers who had not known each other a week,
or as though we had been so long apart that
we had grown away from each other. There was something
about him which escaped me. Yes, the few days of
solitude had indeed put years and a sort of shyness,
(08:20):
or rather ceremony between us. It did not seem natural
to me now to clap him on the back and
make the old harmless jokes at him. He must have
felt the constraint too, for we were like children who
had looked forward to a game and did not know
what to play at At six o'clock I left him.
(08:40):
It was not like parting with Marcello. I felt rather
as though I should find my old friend in Rome
that evening, and here only left a shadowy likeness of him.
He accompanied me to the gate and pressed my hand,
and for a moment the true Marcello looked out of
his eyes. But we called out no lofe words to
(09:00):
each other. As I drove away, I had only said,
let me know when you want me, and he had
said mercy. And all the way back to Rome I
felt a chill upon me. His hand had been so cold,
and I thought and thought what could be the matter
with him? That evening I spoke out my anxiety to
(09:21):
Pierre Manya, who shook his head and declared that malaria
fever must be taking hold of him, and that people
often began to show it by being a little lord.
He must not stay there. We must get him away
as soon as possible. I cried. We know Marcello, and
that nothing can make him stir against his will, said Pierre.
(09:43):
Let him alone, and he will get tired of his whim.
It will not kill him to have a touch of malaria,
and some evening he will turn up among us merry
as ever, but he did not. I worked hard at
my picture and finished it but for a few touches,
and he had not yet appeared. Perhaps it was the
extreme application, perhaps the sitting out in that damp place,
(10:07):
for I insist upon tracing it to something more material
than emotion. Well, whatever it was, I fell ill, more
ill than I had ever been in my life. It
was almost twilight when it overtook me, and I remember
it distinctly, though I forget what happened afterward, or rather
I never knew, for I was found by Manya quite unconscious,
(10:29):
and he has told me that I remained so for
some time, and then became delirious and talked of nothing
but Marcello. I have told you that it was very
nearly twilight, but just at the moment when the sun
is gone, the colors show in their true value. Artists
know this, and I was putting last touches here and
there to my picture, and especially to my head of
(10:51):
Mucius Scavela, or rather Marcello. The rest of the picture
came out well enough, but that head, which should have
been the principal one, seemed faded and sunk in the
face appeared to grow paler and paler, and to recede
from me. A strange veil spread over it, and the
eyes seemed to close. I am not easily frightened, and
(11:16):
I know what tricks some peculiar methods of color will
play by certain lights. For the moment I spoke of
had gone, and the twilight grayness had set in, so
I stepped back to look well at it. Just then
the lips, which had become almost white, opened a little
and sighed an illusion. Of course, I must have been
(11:38):
very ill and quite delirious already, for to my imagination
it was a real sigh, or rather a sort of
exhausted gasp. Then it was that I fainted, I suppose.
And when I came to myself, I was in my bed,
with Mannia, Monsieur Sutton standing by me, and a Sieur
de Charite moving softly about among medicine bottles and speaking
(12:01):
in whispers. I stretched out my hands, and they were
thin and yellow, with long, pale nails. And I heard
Mania's voice, which sounded very far away, say DIU mercy.
And now Monsieur Sutton will tell you what I did
not know until long afterward. Martyr Dettire end of section two,
Section two of A Mystery of the Campania by Anne Crawford.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Part one
Martyr Detaire's account of what happened at the Vigna Marziali,
Segment B. The eight days went by sooner than I
(00:22):
had thought they would, and Thursday came bright and sunny
for my expedition. At one o'clock I descended into the
Piazza di Spagna and made a bargain with a man
who had a well fed horse, remembering how dearly Marcella's
want of good sense had cost me a week ago,
and we drove off at a good pace to the
Vigna Marziali. As I was almost forgetting to say that
(00:46):
it was cold, my heart was beating, though I did
not know why I should feel so much emotion. When
we reached the iron gate, the guardiano answered my ring directly,
and I had no sooner set foot in the long
flat walk. Then I saw Marcello hastening to meet me.
I knew you would come, he said, drawing my arm
(01:07):
within his, and so he walked toward the little gray house,
which had a sort of portico and several balconies. And
a sun dial on its front. There were grated windows
down to the ground floor, and the place, to my relief,
looked safe and habitable. He told me that the man
did not sleep there but in a little hut down
(01:29):
toward the campagna, and that he Marcelo, walked himself in
safely every night, which I was also relieved to know.
What do you get to eat? Said I? Oh, I
have goat's flesh and dried beans and polenta with peccorino cheese,
and there is plenty of black bread and sour wine.
He answered smilingly. You see, I am not starved. Do
(01:53):
not overwork yourself, Morvieux, I said, you are worth more
than your opera ever will be. Do I look over worked,
he said, turning his face to me in the broad
out door light. He seemed a little offended at my
saying that about his opera, and I was foolish to
do it. I examined his face critically, and he looked
(02:15):
at me half defiantly. No, not yet, I answered, rather unwillingly,
for I could not say that he did. But there
was a restless inward look in his eyes, and an
almost imperceptible shadow lay around them. It seemed to me
as though the full temples had grown slightly hollow, and
a sort of faint mist lay over his beauty, making
(02:38):
it seem strange and far off. We were standing before
the door, and he pushed it open, the guardiano following
us with slow, loud, resounding steps. Here is my paradise,
said Marcello, and we entered the house, which was, like
all the others of its kind, a hall with stuccobar reliefs,
(03:00):
and a stairway adorned with antique fragments gave access to
the upper rooms. Marcellow ran up the steps lightly, and
I heard him lock a door somewhere above and draw
out the key. Then he came and met me on
the landing. This, he said, is my work room, and
he threw open a low door. The key was in
(03:21):
the lock, so this room could not be the one
I heard him close. Tell me I shall not write
like an angel here, he cried. I was so dazzled
by the flood of bright sunshine after the dusk of
the passage that I blinked like an owl at first,
And then I saw a large room, quite bare except
(03:42):
for a rough table and chair, the chair covered with
manuscript music you are looking for the furniture, he said, laughing,
hit his outside. Look here, and he drew me to
a rickety door of worm eaten wood and coarse greenish glass,
and flow it open on to a rusty iron balcony.
(04:03):
He was right, the furniture was outside. That is to say,
a divine view met my eyes. The Sabine mountains, the
Alban Hills, the broad Campania with its medieval towers and
ruined aqueducts, and the open plain to the sea, all
this glowing and yet calm in the sunlight. No wonder
(04:25):
he could write. There the balcony ran round the corner
of the house, and to the right I looked down
upon an alley of alexes, ending in a grove of
tall laurel trees, very old. Apparently there were bits of
sculpture and some ancient sarcophagi standing gleaming among them. And
even from so high I could hear a little stream
(04:47):
of water pouring from an antique mask into a long
rough trough. I saw the brown guardiano digging at his
cabbages and onions, and I laughed to think that I
could fancy him a murderer. He had a little bag
of relics which dangled to and fro over his sunburned breast,
And he looked very innocent when he sat down upon
(05:08):
an old column to eat a piece of black bread
with an onion, which he had just pulled out of
the ground, slicing it with a knife, not at all
like a dagger. But I kept my thoughts to myself,
for Marcello would have laughed at them. We were standing together,
looking down at the man as he drank from his
hands at the running fountain, and Marcello now leaned over
(05:30):
the balcony and called out along oh e. The lazy
Guardiano looked up, nodded, and then got up slowly from
the stone, where he had been half kneeling to reach
the jet of water. We are going to dine, Marcello explained,
I have been waiting for you. Presently we heard the
(05:51):
man's heavy tread upon the stairs, and he entered, bearing
a strange meal in a basket. There came to light
peccorino cheese made from eyewe's milk, black bread of the
consistency of a stone, a great bowl of salad apparently
composed of weeds, and a sausage which filled the room.
With a strong smell of garlic. Then he disappeared and
(06:13):
came back with a dish full of ragged looking goat's flesh,
cooked together with a mass of smoking polenta. And I
am not sure that there was not oil in it.
I told you I lived well, and now you see,
said Marcello. It was a terrible meal, but I had
to eat it, and was glad to have some rough
(06:33):
sour wine to help me, which tasted of earth and roots.
When we had finished, I said, and your opera, how
are you getting on? Not a word about that? He cried.
You see how I have written, and he turned over
a heap of manuscript. But do not talk to me
about it. I will not lose my ideas in words.
(06:57):
This was not alike Marcello, who loved to discuss his work.
And I looked at him astonished. Come, he said, we
will go down into the garden and you shall tell
me about the comrades. What are they doing? Has Manya
found a model for his Clytemnestra. I humored him, as
(07:17):
I always did, and we sat upon the stone bench
behind the house, looking toward the Laurel Grove, talking of
the pictures and the students. I wanted to walk down
the e like saleh, but he stopped me. If you
are afraid of the damp, don't go down there. He said.
The place is like a vault. Let us stay here
(07:37):
and be thankful for this heavenly view. Well, let us
stay here, I answered, resigned. As Ever, he lit a
cigar and offered me one in silence. If he did
not care to talk, I could be still too. From
time to time he made some indifferent observation, and I
answered it in the same tone. It all, my most
(08:00):
seemed to me, as though we the old heart comrades,
had become strangers who had not known each other a week,
or as though we had been so long apart that
we had grown away from each other. There was something
about him which escaped me. Yes, the few days of
solitude had indeed put years and a sort of shyness,
(08:20):
or rather ceremony between us. It did not seem natural
to me now to clap him on the back and
make the old harmless jokes at him. He must have
felt the constraint too, for we were like children who
had looked forward to a game and did not know
what to play at At six o'clock I left him.
(08:40):
It was not like parting with Marcello. I felt rather
as though I should find my old friend in Rome
that evening, and here only left a shadowy likeness of him.
He accompanied me to the gate and pressed my hand,
and for a moment the true Marcello looked out of
his eyes. But we called out no lofe words to
(09:00):
each other. As I drove away, I had only said,
let me know when you want me, and he had
said mercy. And all the way back to Rome I
felt a chill upon me. His hand had been so cold,
and I thought and thought what could be the matter
with him? That evening I spoke out my anxiety to
(09:21):
Pierre Manya, who shook his head and declared that malaria
fever must be taking hold of him, and that people
often began to show it by being a little lord.
He must not stay there. We must get him away
as soon as possible. I cried. We know Marcello, and
that nothing can make him stir against his will, said Pierre.
(09:43):
Let him alone, and he will get tired of his whim.
It will not kill him to have a touch of malaria,
and some evening he will turn up among us merry
as ever, but he did not. I worked hard at
my picture and finished it but for a few touches,
and he had not yet appeared. Perhaps it was the
extreme application, perhaps the sitting out in that damp place,
(10:07):
for I insist upon tracing it to something more material
than emotion. Well, whatever it was, I fell ill, more
ill than I had ever been in my life. It
was almost twilight when it overtook me, and I remember
it distinctly, though I forget what happened afterward, or rather
I never knew, for I was found by Manya quite unconscious,
(10:29):
and he has told me that I remained so for
some time, and then became delirious and talked of nothing
but Marcello. I have told you that it was very
nearly twilight, but just at the moment when the sun
is gone, the colors show in their true value. Artists
know this, and I was putting last touches here and
there to my picture, and especially to my head of
(10:51):
Mucius Scavela, or rather Marcello. The rest of the picture
came out well enough, but that head, which should have
been the principal one, seemed faded and sunk in the
face appeared to grow paler and paler, and to recede
from me. A strange veil spread over it, and the
eyes seemed to close. I am not easily frightened, and
(11:16):
I know what tricks some peculiar methods of color will
play by certain lights. For the moment I spoke of
had gone, and the twilight grayness had set in, so
I stepped back to look well at it. Just then
the lips, which had become almost white, opened a little
and sighed an illusion. Of course, I must have been
(11:38):
very ill and quite delirious already, for to my imagination
it was a real sigh, or rather a sort of
exhausted gasp. Then it was that I fainted, I suppose.
And when I came to myself, I was in my bed,
with Mannia, Monsieur Sutton standing by me, and a Sieur
de Charite moving softly about among medicine bottles and speaking
(12:01):
in whispers. I stretched out my hands, and they were
thin and yellow, with long, pale nails. And I heard
Mania's voice, which sounded very far away, say DIU mercy.
And now Monsieur Sutton will tell you what I did
not know until long afterward. Martyr Dettire end of section two,
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