he French ladies, who evidently
were most anxious to acquaint themselves with the satisfactory condition
of her daughter's "walking members," though she went so far as to allow
the maiden to appear before them clad only in a flowing robe of gossamer
silk. The possible danger of losing her opportunity to become Queen of
France proved, however, beyond the ambitious young lady's powers of
endurance, and to the horror of her haughty mother and the delight of the
foreign emissaries, the Princess Clementia then and there doffed her
silken robes and appeared before all in the historic garb of Lady Godiva.
A glance at the princess's form _in puris naturalibus_ sufficed to
convince the inquisitive Frenchwomen that no hereditary taint from Il
Zoppo descended to his daughter; and accordingly the betrothal of the two
young people was celebrated that very evening amidst the usual revels and
feastings.

The clean cheerful town on the sheer limestone crags boasts a cathedral,
wherein, so the guide-book informs us, we shall find the tomb of
Filangieri, the great Italian jurist. But the building contains in reality
far more stirring associations than those connected with a prominent
lawyer. It is but a rococo structure of the usual Italian type, and its
painted series of portraits of past bishops is by no means an uncommon
complement of cathedral churches in the South. But here, amidst the long
rows of indifferent portraits, we note an omission, a space that is
occupied, not by a likeness but by a medallion, which represents a cherub
with the forefinger of his right hand laid as a seal of silence upon the
lips. Here-by indeed hangs a tale, obscure perhaps, but pathetic and human
to the last degree. We all remember the broad frieze filled with Doges'
faces which is carried round the great hall of the ducal palace in Venice,
wherein the place assigned to the traitor, Marino Faliero, contains a
black veil instead of the usual portrait. Here in little Vico Equense is
to be found a somewhat similar incident, but with this important
difference:--the bishop whose portrait is here omitted was the most worthy
of remembrance of all his peers.

The crime of Monsignore Michele Natale, Bishop of Vico Equense, to which
the silent cherub bears everlasting witness, was that of being a patriot
and a Liberal (in the truest sense of that term) during the anxious times
of the ill-fated Parthenopean Republic, that short-lived period of
aristocratic governm