But The Municipio Of Naples, Though Extensive, Is A Purely Local
Charity, And I Question Whether Its Inmates Will Hear Of Any One Save
Their Own Cousins And Brothers-In-Law Figuring As Colleagues In Office.
Every attempt at innovation in agriculture, as in industry, is forthwith
discouraged by new and subtle impositions, which lie in wait for the
enterprising Italian and punish him for his ideas.
There is, of course,
a prohibitive duty on every article or implement manufactured abroad;
there is the octroi, a relic of medisevalism, the most unscientific,
futile, and vexatious of taxes; there are municipal dues to be paid on
animals bought and animals sold, on animals kept and animals killed, on
milk and vine-props and bricks, on timber for scaffolding and lead and
tiles and wine - on every conceivable object which the peasant produces
or requires for his existence. And one should see the faces of the
municipal employes who extort these tributes. God alone knows from
what classes of the populace they are recruited; certain it is that
their physiognomy reflects their miserable calling. One can endure the
militarism of Germany and the bureaucracy of Austria; but it is
revolting to see decent Italian countryfolk at the mercy of these
uncouth savages, veritable cave-men, whose only intelligible expression
is one of malice striving to break through a crust of congenital
cretinism.
We hear much of the great artists and speculative philosophers of old
Italy. The artists of modern Italy are her bureaucrats who design and
elaborate the taxes; her philosophers, the peasants who pay them.
In point of method, at least, there is nothing to choose between the
exactions of the municipal and governmental ruffians. I once saw an old
woman fined fifty francs for having in her possession a pound of
sea-salt. By what logic will you make it clear to ignorant people that
it is wrong to take salt out of the sea, whence every one takes fish
which are more valuable? The waste of time employed over red tape alone
on these occasions would lead to a revolution anywhere save among men
inured by long abuses to this particular form of tyranny. No wonder the
women of the country-side, rather than waste three precious hours in
arguments about a few cheeses, will smuggle them past the authorities
under the device of being enceintes; no wonder their wisest old men
regard the paternal government as a successfully organized swindle,
which it is the citizen's bounden duty to frustrate whenever possible.
Have you ever tried to convey - in legal fashion - a bottle of wine from
one town into another; or to import, by means of a sailing-boat, an old
frying-pan into some village by the sea? It is a fine art, only to be
learnt by years of apprenticeship. The regulations on these subjects,
though ineffably childish, look simple enough on paper; they take no
account of that "personal element" which is everything in the south, of
the ruffled tempers of those gorgeous but inert creatures who, disturbed
in their siestas or mandolin-strummings, may keep you waiting half a
day while they fumble ominously over some dirty-looking scrap of paper.
For on such occasions they are liable to provoking fits of
conscientiousness. This is all very well, my dear sir, but - Ha! Where,
where is that certificate of origin, that stamp, that lascia-passare?
And all for one single sou!
No wonder even Englishmen discover that law-breaking, in Italy, becomes
a necessity, a rule of life.
And, soon enough, much more than a mere necessity. . . .
For even as the traveller new to Borneo, when they offer him a
durian-fruit, is instantly brought to vomiting-point by its odour, but
after a few mouthfuls declares it to be the very apple of Paradise, and
marvels how he could have survived so long in the benighted lands where
such ambrosial fare is not; even as the true connaisseur who, beholding
some rare scarlet idol from the Tingo-Tango forests, at first casts it
aside and then, light dawning as he ponders over those monstrous
complexities, begins to realize that they, and they alone, contain the
quintessential formulae of all the fervent dreamings of Scopas and
Michelangelo; even as he who first, upon a peak in Darien, gazed
awestruck upon the grand Pacific slumbering at his feet, till presently
his senses reeled at the blissful prospect of fresh regions unrolling
themselves, boundless, past the fulfilment of his fondest hopes - - -
Even so, in Italy, the domesticated Englishman is amazed to find that he
possesses a sense hitherto unrevealed, opening up a new horizon, a new
zest in life - the sense of law-breaking. At first, being an honest man,
he is shocked at the thought of such a thing; next, like a sensible
person, reconciled to the inevitable; lastly, as befits his virile race,
he learns to play the game so well that the horrified officials
grudgingly admit (and it is their highest praise):
Inglese italianizzato -
Diavolo incarnato.
Yes; slowly the charm of law-breaking grows upon the Italianated Saxon;
slowly, but surely. There is a neo-barbarism not only in matters of art.
VI
AT VENOSA
There has always, no doubt, been a castle at Venosa. Frederick
Barbarossa lived here oftener than in Sicily; from these regions he
could look over to his beloved East, and the security of this particular
keep induced him to store his treasures therein. The indefatigable
Huillard Breholles has excavated some account of them from the
Hohen-staufen records. Thus we learn that here, at Venosa, the Emperor
deposited that marvel, that tentorium, I mean, mirifica arte
constructum, in quo imagines solis et lunce artificialiter motte, cursum
suum certis et debitis spatiis peragrant, et boras diei et noctis
in-fallibiliter indicant. Cuius tentorii valor viginti millium marcarum
pretium dicitur transcendisse. It was given him by the Sultan of
Babylonia. Always the glowing Oriental background!
The present castle, a picturesque block with moat and corner towers, was
built in 1470 by the redoubtable Pierro del Balzo.
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