He listened courteously to the young man's comments on
the wretched state of the peasantry, the extravagances of the court and
nobility and the judicial corruption which made the lower classes submit
to any injustice rather than seek redress through the courts. De Crucis
agreed with him in the main, admitting that the monopoly of corn, the
maintenance of feudal rights and the King's indifference to the graver
duties of his rank placed the kingdom of Naples far below such states as
Tuscany or Venetia; "though," he added, "I think our economists, in
praising one state at the expense of another, too often overlook those
differences of character and climate that must ever make it impossible
to govern different races in the same manner. Our peasants have a blunt
saying: Cut off the dog's tail and he is still a dog; and so I suspect
the most enlightened rule would hardly bring this prompt and choleric
people, living on a volcanic soil amid a teeming vegetation, into any
resemblance with the clear-headed Tuscan or the gentle and dignified
Roman."
As he spoke they emerged upon the Chiaia, where at that hour the quality
took the air in their carriages, while the lower classes thronged the
footway. A more vivacious scene no city of Europe could present. The
gilt coaches drawn by six or eight of the lively Neapolitan horses,
decked with plumes and artificial flowers and preceded by running
footmen who beat the foot-passengers aside with long staves; the
richly-dressed ladies seated in this never-ending file of carriages,
bejewelled like miraculous images and languidly bowing to their friends;
the throngs of citizens and their wives in holiday dress; the sellers of
sherbet, ices and pastry bearing their trays and barrels through the
crowd with strange cries and the jingling of bells; the friars of every
order in their various habits, the street-musicians, the half-naked
lazzaroni, cripples and beggars, who fringed the throng like the line of
scum edging a fair lake;--this medley of sound and colour, which in fact
resembled some sudden growth of the fiery soil, was an expressive
comment on the abate's words.
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