Chapter 57

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 Cafe 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 cafe 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.

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.