bound, there is only the distance of some seventeen miles.  It was in February, a month of mild and melancholy sunshine in those southern regions, when the whole bay of Naples with its belt of distant hills is wont to take one tint of modulated azure, that the royal fugitives performed this voyage.  Over the sleeping sea they glided; while from the galley’s stern the king with a voice as sad as Boabdil’s when he sat down to weep for Granada, cried:  ’Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.’

There was no want of courage in the youth.  By his simple presence he had intimidated a mob of rebels in Naples.  By the firmness of his carriage he subdued the insolent governor of Ischia, and made himself master of the island.  There he waited till the storm was overpast.  Ten times more a man than Charles, he watched the French king depart from Naples leaving scarcely a rack behind—­some troops decimated by disease and unnerved by debauchery, and a general or two without energy or vigor.  Then he returned and entered on a career of greater popularity than could have been enjoyed by him if the French had never made the fickle race of Naples feel how far more odious is a foreign than a familiar yoke.[1]

Charles entered Naples as a conqueror or liberator on February 22, 1495.  He was welcomed and feted by the Neapolitans, than whom no people are more childishly delighted with a change of masters.  He enjoyed his usual sports, and indulged in his usual love-affairs.  With suicidal insolence and want of policy he alienated the sympathies of the noble families by dividing the titles, offices, and fiefs of the kingdom among his retinue.[2] Without receiving so much as a provisional investiture from the Pope, he satisfied his vanity by parading on May 12 as sovereign, with a ball in one hand and a scepter in the other, through the city.  Then he was forced to return upon his path and to seek France with the precipitancy he had shown in gaining Naples.  Alexander, who was witty, said the French had conquered Italy with lumps of chalk and wooden spurs, because they rode unarmed in slippers and sent couriers before them to select their quarters.  It remained to be seen that the achievements of this conquest could be effaced as easily as a chalk mark is rubbed out, or a pair of wooden spurs are broken.

[1] The misfortunes and the bravery of this young prince inspire a deep feeling of interest.  It is sad to read that after recovering his kingdom in 1496, he died in his twenty-eighth year, worn out with fatigue and with the pleasures of his marriage to his aunt Joanna, whom he loved too passionately.  His uncle Frederick, the brother of Alfonso II., succeeded to the throne.  Thus in three years Naples had five Sovereigns.

    [2] ’Tous estats et offices furent donnez aux Francois, a deux
    ou trois,’ says De Comines.