of this brilliant train he took his way through the principal streets of the city, halting at the five knots of the noblesse, where the gentlemen and their wives who had assembled there detained him a long while, requesting him to be pleased to confer with his own hand the order of knighthood on their sons, which he willingly did.  At last he reached the cathedral church of St. Januarius, which had recently been rebuilt by Alphonso I. of Arragon, after the earth-quake of 1456.  The archbishop, at the head of his clergy, came out to meet him, and conducted him to the front of the high altar, where the head of St. Januarius was exhibited.

When all these solemnities had been accomplished to the great satisfaction of the populace, bonfires were lighted up for three days; the city was illuminated; and only a week afterwards, on the 20th of May, 1495, Charles VIII. started from Naples to return to France, with an army, at the most, from twelve to fifteen thousand strong, leaving for guardian of his new kingdom his cousin, Gilbert of Bourbon, Count de Montpensier, a brave but indolent knight (who never rose, it was said, until noon), with eight or ten thousand men, scattered for the most part throughout the provinces.

During the months of April and May, thus wasted by Charles VIII., the Italian league, and especially the Venetians and the Duke of Milan, Ludovic the Moor, had vigorously pushed forward their preparations for war, and had already collected an army more numerous than that with which the King of France, in order to return home, would have to traverse the whole of Italy.  He took more than six weeks to traverse it, passing three days at Rome, four at Siena, the same number at Pisa, and three at Lucca, though he had declared that he would not halt anywhere.  He evaded entering Florence, where he had made promises which he could neither retract nor fulfil.  The Dominican Savonarola, “who had always preached greatly in the king’s favor,” says Commynes, “and by his words had kept the Florentines from turning against us,” came to see him on his way at Poggibonsi.  “I asked him,” said Commynes, “whether the king would be able to cross without danger to his person, seeing the great muster that was being made by the Venetians.  He answered me that the king would have trouble on the road, but that the honor would remain his, though he had but a hundred men at his back; but, seeing that he had not done well for the reformation of the Church, as he ought, and had suffered his men to plunder and rob the people, God had given sentence against him, and in short he would have a touch of the scourge.”