LAZARONI AND MACARONI.
About forty or fifty lazaroni surrounded the Dodge Club when they
landed, but to their intense disgust the latter ignored them
altogether, and carried their own umbrellas and carpet-bags. But the
lazaroni revenged themselves. As the Doctor stooped to pick up his
cane, which had fallen, a number of articles dropped from his
breast-pocket, and among them was a revolver, a thing which was
tabooed in Naples. A ragged rascal eagerly snatched it and handed it
to a gendarme, and it was only after paying a piastre that the Doctor
was permitted to retain it.
Even after the travellers had started on foot in search of lodgings
the lazaroni did not desert them. Ten of them followed everywhere.
At intervals they respectfully offered to carry their baggage, or show
them to a hotel, whichever was most agreeable to their Noble
Excellencies.
Their Noble Excellencies were in despair. At length, stumbling upon
The Café dell' Europa, they rushed in and passed three hours over
their breakfast. This done, they congratulated themselves on. Having
got rid of their followers.
In vain!
Scarcely had they emerged from the café than Dick uttered a cry of
horror. From behind a corner advanced their ten friends, with the
same calm demeanor, the game unruffled and even cheerful patience,
and the same respectful offer of their humble services.
In despair they separated. Buttons and Dick obtained lodgings in the
Strada di San Bartollomeo. The Senator and the other two engaged
pleasant rooms on the Strada Nuova, which overlooked the Bay.
Certainly Naples is a very curious place. There are magnificent
edifices--palaces, monuments, castles, fortresses, churches, and
cathedrals. There are majestic rows of buildings; gay shops,
splendidly decorated; stately colonnades, and gardens like Paradise.
There are streets unrivalled for gayety, forever filled to overflowing
with the busy, the laughing, the jolly; dashing officers, noisy
soldiers, ragged lazaroni, proud nobles, sickly beggars, lovely
ladies; troops of cavalry galloping up and down; ten thousand caleches
dashing to and fro. There is variety enough everywhere.
All the trades are divided, and arranged in different parts of the
city. Here are the locksmiths, there the cabinet-makers; here the
builders, there the armorers; in this place the basket-weavers, in
that the cork-makers.
And most amusing of all is the street most favored of the lazaroni.
Here they live, and move, and have their being; here they are born,
they grow, they wed, they rear families, they eat, and drink, and die.
A long array of furnaces extends up the street; over each is a
stew-pan, and behind each a cook armed with an enormous ladle. At all
hours of the day the cook serves up macaroni to customers. This is the
diet of the people.
In the cellars behind those lines of stew-pans are the eating-houses
of the vulgar--low, grimy places, floors incrusted with mud, tables of
thick deal worn by a thousand horny hands, slippery with ten thousand
upset dishes of macaroni. Here the pewter plates, and the iron knives,
forks, and spoons are chained to the massive tables. How utter must
the destitution be when it is thought necessary to chain up such
worthless trash!
Into one of these places went Buttons and Dick in their study of human
nature. They sat at the table. A huge dish of macaroni was served up.
Fifty guests stopped to look at the new-comers. The waiters winked at
the customers of the house, and thrust their tongues in their cheeks.
[Illustration: Lazaroni And Macaroni.]
Dick could not eat, but the more philosophical Buttons made an
extremely hearty meal, and pronounced the macaroni delicious.
On landing in a city which swarmed with beggars the first thought of
our tourists was, How the mischief do they all live? There are sixty
thousand lazaroni in this gay city. The average amount of clothing to
each man is about one-third of a pair of trowsers and a woolen cap.
But after spending a day or two the question changed its form, and
became, How the mischief can they all help living? Food may be picked
up in the streets. Handfuls of oranges and other fruits sell for next
to nothing; strings of figs cost about a cent.
The consequence is that these sixty thousand people, fellow-creatures
of ours, who are known as the lazaroni of Naples, whom we half pity
and altogether despise, and look upon as lowest members of the
Caucasian race, are not altogether very miserable. On the contrary,
taken as a whole, they form the oiliest, fattest, drollest, noisiest,
sleekest, dirtiest, ignorantest, prejudicedest, narrow-mindedest,
shirtlessest, clotheslessest, idlest, carelessest, jolliest,
absurdest, rascaliest--but still, all that, perhaps--taken all in
all--the happiest community on the face of the earth.
[Illustration: Yankee Doodle.]