In one part of this cellar we kept wines, liquors and provisions. From
the rapidity of their disappearance we acquired the superstitious belief
that the spirits of the persons buried there came at dead of night and
held a festival.
It was at least certain that frequently of a morning we
would discover fragments of pickled meats, canned goods and such débris,
littering the place, although it had been securely locked and barred
against human intrusion. It was proposed to remove the provisions and
store them elsewhere, but our dear mother, always generous and
hospitable, said it was better to endure the loss than risk exposure: if
the ghosts were denied this trifling gratification they might set on
foot an investigation, which would overthrow
our scheme of the division
of labor, by diverting the energies of the whole family into the single
industry pursued by me--we might all decorate the cross-beams of
gibbets. We accepted her decision with filial submission, due to our
reverence for her wordly wisdom and the purity of her character.
On the incidents of our precipitate flight from that horrible place--on
the extinction of all human sentiment in that tumultuous, mad scramble
up the damp and mouldy stairs--slipping, falling,
pulling one another
down and clambering over one another's back--the lights extinguished,
babes trampled beneath the feet of their strong brothers and hurled
backward to death by a mother's arm!--on all this I do not dare to
dwell.
My mother, my eldest brother and sister and I escaped; the others
remained below, to perish of their wounds, or of their terror--some,
perhaps, by flame. For within an hour we four, hastily gathering
together what money and jewels we had and what clothing we could carry,
fired the dwelling and fled by its light into the hills.
We did not even
pause to collect the insurance, and my dear mother said on her
death-bed, years afterward in a distant land, that this was the only sin
of omission that lay upon her conscience. Her confessor, a holy man,
assured her that under the circumstances Heaven would pardon the
neglect.
All was clear. My father, whatever had caused him to be "taken bad" at
his meal (and I think my sainted mother could have thrown some light
upon that matter) had indubitably been buried alive. The grave having
been accidentally dug above the forgotten drain, and down almost to the
crown of its arch, and no coffin having been used, his struggles on
reviving had broken the rotten masonry and he had fallen through,
escaping finally into the cellar. Feeling that he was not welcome in his
own house, yet having no other, he had lived in subterranean seclusion,
a witness to our thrift and a pensioner on our providence.
It was he who
had eaten our food; it was he who had drunk our wine--he was no better
than a thief! In a moment of intoxication, and feeling, no doubt, that
need of companionship which is the one sympathetic link between a
drunken man and his race, he had left his place of concealment at a
strangely inopportune time, entailing the most deplorable consequences
upon those nearest and dearest to him--a blunder that had almost the
dignity of crime.
Photos by paulobrandao