“The officer followed the lazzarone, who gave the handkerchief to the sbirro, and walked away.  The latter had hardly put his prize in his pocket when the officer came up and seized him by the collar.  The sbirro fell on his knees, but the officer was inexorable, and he was sent to prison.  As the sbirro had himself been a lazzarone, he saw at once the trick that had been played him.  He wanted to cheat his confederate, and his confederate had cheated him; but far from bearing him malice for having done so, the sbirro views the conduct of the lazzarone in the light of an exploit, and feels an additional respect for him in consequence.  When he is released from prison, he will seek him out, and they will be hand and glove together.  When that time comes, look to your pockets.”

We are introduced to Ferdinand IV. of Naples, King Nasone, as the lazzaroni nicknamed him; also to Padre Rocco, a popular preacher, and the idol of the lower classes of Neapolitans; and to Cardinal Perelli, remarkable for his simplicity, which quality, as may be supposed, loses nothing in passing through the hands of his present biographer.  With his usual skill, M. Dumas glides from a ticklish story of which the cardinal is the hero, (a story that he does not tell, for which forbearance we give him due credit, since he is evidently sorely tempted thereto,) to an account of the Vardarelli, a band of outlaws which for some time infested Calabria and the Capitanato.

“Gaetano Vardarelli was a native of Calabria, and one of the earliest members of the revolutionary society of the Carbonari.  When Murat, after for some time favouring that society, began to persecute it, Vardarelli fled to Sicily, and took service under King Ferdinand.  He was then twenty-six years of age, possessing the muscles and courage of a lion, the agility of a chamois, the eye of an eagle.  Such a recruit was not to be despised, and he was made sergeant in the Sicilian guards.  On Ferdinand’s restoration in 1815, he followed him to Naples; but finding that he was not likely ever to rise above a very subordinate grade, he became disgusted with the service, deserted, and took refuge in the mountains of Calabria.  There two of his brothers, and some thirty brigands and outlaws, assembled around him and elected him their chief, with right of life and death over them.  He had been a slave in the town; he found himself a king in the mountains.

“Proceeding according to the old formula observed by banditti chiefs both in Calabria and in melodramas, Vardarelli proclaimed himself redresser general of wrongs and grievances, and acted up to his profession by robbing the rich and assisting the poor.  The consequence was, that he soon became exceedingly dreaded by the former, and exceedingly popular among the latter class; and at last his exploits reached the ears of King Ferdinand himself, who was highly indignant at such goings on, and gave orders that the bandit should immediately be hung.  But there are three things