The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, December 10, 1905, Page 3

ane prayed and was full. + possession known of other the new kness or re- or the cattle t wrong, or down, or trade or it was because of the s because some one pos- had put a spell upon ops wei de before Laui to church 1 This o enter their little cot- n desperation sleep- 4 again exorcise the devils. tle colored religious so Virginia the wife of Luigl, says to ‘the T statement: ing to save ourselves. were praying our way, and she praying her way. between 2 and 3 o'clock in g and the sister-in-law, strange vigil, protested poor little baby r efforts to keep the ed little ones awak: to and, “We were pray We g th nst keeping the awake any longer. In their councils husband and wife had whispered to each other their sus- picions that Catherine de Paoll was passessed of the deviis tormenting them. She had touched the children, espe- cially on this night—and the children were plainly sleepier than ever. Now she wanted them to let the little baby go to sieep, when they knew that sleep meant death for any one of them. The sister-in-law was standing by the kitchen stove with her back to them. They exchanged glances. The fell upon v with slaught. One chair was broken then another, and the dreadful, sick- deed was dome. This was at 3 in the morning. A little before 8 a neighbor came to the little cottage on Charter Oak street and Luigi de Paoli called to him: “You cannot come in h: You can look in through the window and see.” He looked. There was a still, shapeless thing on the floor. Lulgi told him what it was. There were the religious pictures, cheap little colored prints, scattered about, the rosary on the table; the mother, ghastly, distraught, still strug- gling to keep the little fretting baby awake. “There was nothing else to do. It was better to kill her th&n that we all should die.” x This is all that Luigi de Paoli says, with an earnestness beyond description. 1t is as if he says he and his cherished family were journeying through a wil- derness and wild beasts fell upon them and he had to kill to save his own; or as if a mad dog. once a pet, had put their lives in jeopardy and had to be slain. In his words and tone there is justifica- tion and there is sorrow. His conviction and his attitude are un- alterable. With his attorney, Judge Spinetti, I visit Luigi de Paoll in prison, expecting to see a madman, for, to the twentieth century mind, the act is the act only of a madman. Through one of the grated doors a lit- tie man comes out, roughly dressed, with the mark of the tofler upon him—the mark, indeed, of generations of toilers, for he is sauat, sinewy, constructed for use and not for grace or beauty, with the strong thick torso and short less of law. JECYORA the peasant, a tough little packhorse of a man. His face is rough, kindly and honest— clumsily malded. to be sure, but not re- pelling confidence. The glance of his bright brown eyes is singularly earnest and steady for a man suspected of being a maniac. He goes over in Italian (Judge Spinetti acting as interpreter) the circumstances leading up to and the details of the trag- edy in the little cottage on Charter Oak street—telling everything as I have told it already. 3 “What could I do?” he asked at the end. “There was only one thing to do— it was her life or ours; I had to save my ildren. The sincere belief, the absolute convie- tion, is pitiful. He looks from one to the other so sure that he has asked the unanswer- able question; that there was no other solution but the one he found. How does he feel now: is he malcon- tento? asks Judge Spinetti. He puts his hand on his heart and smiles a smile of infinite sadness—a sane man’s smile of incurable grief, of utter hopelessness. He says he feels all empty inside— hollow, hollow; and he taps his chest. It is quite empty—turbulence, tem- pest, passion, anxiety and hope; all are gone. Who that has suffered does know the sensation? Is he malcontento? Yes, yes; he would be a beast if he were not after—after that. But—he had to do it. He did not wish to, but he had to do it for the children’s sake. It was his duty to save them. He must pay the penalty he supposes. It means—he makes a speaking, awful gesture, a sweep of not AN FRANUCISCO SUNDAY CAL:. e URS de PACL the hand arouna the neck and an up- ward jerk dreadfully illustrative—it means el cordo, the rope, for him, and, well, he is ready. Yet—what else could he do? Su;el)’ he had to save his children. So absolute is his Dbelief “diai.” The “dlai” is what the Italians cgll this superstition which we commonly and incorrectly term the Evil Eye, and “diai” means merely “devils,” being the Italian plural for devil. The murder of Luigi de Paoli's sis- ter-in-law by Luigi de Paoli for this strange reason would be but a sensa- tional incident if it were not for the fact that his superstition is shared by thousands of his countrymen right here ~in San Francisco. Among the humble Italians there is perhaps not a home where the “diai” are not feared, where strange precau- tions against them are not taken It is a superstition that Boccaccio made merry with in his day and hung many a side-splitting tale upon, setting the sophisticated to playing pranks upon the credulous. But never before has it been carried to the fearful extremity that unhappy Luigi de Paoli's terror drove him to. Once upon a time, so lacal history runs, a family in- terror of the “diai” were engaged in exorcising them by frying a heart, according to an old crone's advice, and keeping an eye on the door for the one possessed of the devils that had worked them ill. The one possessed would be the first one to enter, according to the working of the charm; and the first one to enter in consequence was set upon and beaten with the frying pan until he was a can- didate for six weeks' treatment in a hospital. in the K This is but one incident, and for all but the man who met the frying pan a laughable incident. More serious was the bellef that ery- sipelas was an infliction of the Evil One. Among even thé enl it was, and indeed soon as erysipelas develops in a tient, to cut off the doct visits. throw the medicine out of the window and call in some old crone with a gift to mutter incantations to drive the devils out. It no secret that in the case of no less a person than the late Senator Palmieri this was done, and that his death resulted from the treatment. It is not so long ago that, in order to stamp out this very abuse, four old women, who were supposed to be gifted with the @ower to drive out devils, wer: prosecuted in order to force the admi sion that they were frauds and had no such power, and thus open the minds of the duped, ignorant, credulous folk hold- ing to their superstition. All the il's that flesh and fluctuating fortunes are hLeir to are attributed to the machirations of the “dial.” If one man's horse runs away, or another man's barn htened Ital the custom, burns down: if the pigs die or sickness or comes to the cattle; if the baby fret the wife pines, or melancholy attac husband, the “diai” have been at work and some unsuspected person in the gu of a friend has brought their wicked & ence into the household. So prevalent is the belief that only a little while ago one bright lit woman otherwise of modern mind, whose ba fell ill of meningitis, insisted that & gi friend of hers had “looked at it st 1y and then it fell ill. . It is not surprising when the “dial” hold such terrors that strange things are re- sorted to to drive them away and cir- cumvent them. Sometimes it is not practicable to fall JOHN ned under the palm a permanent charm against t! same sign glove, sewing the fi ing it over the doorway dwellers within. Ashes and oil mixed into a paste and to protect the rubbed the breast in th form of the cross is another prote For the same reaso beautitul strings of Neapolitan cora our fash- fonable girl globe trott brought home to become the fad of a moment are worn by the Ital Many are schemes for schemes so’ laughable sh circumstance that hown how grave a thing superstit Dr. Bacigalupi, tt geon, made the oner’s inquest that three- T s—1 forget the proportion, figur er eluding * me successfully—of Italians here belisve In the “dial” and many of the educated and cultured mem- bers of the Italian colony indorsed his the statement as bringing the colony iuto disr Yet to cover a ot and deny its existente d T It festers even whil There a €. intelligent, in the Italfan them not to hide educated, cu colony, and it Mes with this blemish of i rance upon their countrymen, but to let the light in upon it through their papers, their own teaching and gentle uplifting. It is for them to feel the responsibility of the enlightened and fortunate %9 the unenlightened and unfortunate.