92

LIFE OF COLONEL MACERONI.

share along with the other six. His tastes and habits werenot of the most refined description, but there was earlyproof of their most particular accordance with the con-genial disposition of the young king, his pupil. Born activeand robust, Ferdinand attended to nothing but sports andexercises of a gymnastic nature, in all which he was joinedby his admiring preceptor. All the nearly obsolete ordon-nances and laws concerning the chase, and royal preserves,and the most atrocious of arbitrary inflictions, amongstothers, “ La Corda,” were, in despite of Tanucci, enacted tocompel observance.

At the age of twelve years, the most distinguishedliterary men of the day, and they were many, were engagedas instructors to the king. But he never had time for anyof their lessons, and so he went on growing, his ignorancekeeping pace with his personal robustness and dexterity.His only pride was, in the use of his gun and his fish spear,or the management of a horse. In all his tastes and dissi-pated modes, he was of course joined by the hangers-on atcourt.

He had become a husband and a father. When forming acamp of a corps which he had raised and exercised calledLiparotti, he would erect in the midst thereof a capaciousbooth or tavern, where, dressed in the garb of mine host ofthe wine shop, he would sell and dispense his viands andwine at prices agreeable to the vulgar buyers, while thequeen and his courtiers played the parts of hostess andof waiters. Many times did his “ majesty,” after catchinga vast quantity of fish in the lakes of Patria, and the Fusaro,cause it to be brought to Naples, where, setting up a vastfishmonger’s stall in the street of Santa Lucia, himself inthe garb of a fisherman, the language, manners, and air ofsuch being natural to him without assumption, he would