English landlady of the _Piccola Sentinella_,
who herself had an almost miraculous escape on the occasion, gave us a
most vivid and heart-rending description of how her hotel and most of its
inmates were overwhelmed on that awful July night, and how the existing
inn is literally built upon foundations that are filled with many
unrecovered bodies of victims. It was on a dark sultry night after the
evening meal had been finished, when the many guests of the _Piccola
Sentinella_ were sitting in the public rooms or on the terrace overlooking
the hotel gardens. In the _salon_ a young Englishman, an accomplished
musician, had been playing for some time on the piano, when suddenly and
unexpectedly he plunged into the strains of Chopin's _Marche Funebre_,
which had the immediate effect of scattering his audience, since many of
his listeners, not caring for so melancholy a piece of music, deserted the
room for the garden. Lucky indeed were those persons driven forth by the
strains of Chopin's dirge, for a few moments later came the earthquake,
when in a trice the whole hotel was swallowed up in the yawning chasm of
the earth. Everybody inside the walls was killed, and the body of the poor
pianist was actually discovered later amidst the wreckage, crushed down
upon the instrument which had struck the warning notes of impending
disaster. The horrors of that night still linger vividly in the memory of
the people, and many are the terrible incidents, and many also, we are
glad to say, the acts of bravery which are recorded of it. One elderly
English lady, who owned a small villa on the slope above the hotel, rushed
at the first suspicion of the catastrophe into the stone archway of a
window, whence she beheld the whole of her house collapse like a castle of
cards around her. Nothing daunted by the spectacle, this gallant woman, as
soon as the shock had ceased and the clouds of dust rising from the ruin
had cleared away, left her own dismantled home, of which nothing but the
one wall that had sheltered her remained standing, and joined the
_parrocco_, the parish priest of Casamicciola, in the task of succouring
the living and comforting the dying. To the darkness of the night was now
added a heavy rainfall, yet the good priest and this noble woman traversed
together the altered and devastated scene amidst the wet and gloom on
their errand of mercy. It is some satisfaction to learn that this piece of
unselfish heroism and devotion on the