Has this man, then, no family, that he should benefit strangers? Or is he one of nature’s unfortunates—soft-witted? Thus they argue. They will do acts of spontaneous kindness towards their family, far oftener than is customary with us. But outside that narrow sphere, _interesse_ (Odyssean self-advantage) is the mainspring of their actions. Whence their smooth and glozing manners towards the stranger, and those protestations of undying affection which beguile the unwary—they wish to be forever in your good graces, for sooner or later you may be of use; and if perchance you do content them, they will marvel (philosophically) at your grotesque generosity, your lack of discrimination and restraint. Such _malizia_ (cleverness) is none the more respectable for being childishly transparent. The profound and unscrupulous northerner quickly familiarizes himself with its technique, and turns it to his own profit. Lowering his moral notions, he soon—so one of them expressed it to me—“walks round them without getting off his chair” and, on the strength of his undeserved reputation for simplicity and fair dealing, keeps them dangling a lifetime in a tremble of obsequious amiability, cheered on by the hope of ultimately over-reaching him. Idle dream, where a pliant and sanguine southerner is pitted against the unswerving Saxon or Teuton! This accounts for the success of foreign trading houses in the south. Business is business, and the devil take the hindmost! By all means; but they who are not rooted to the spot by commercial exigencies nor ready to adopt debased standards of conduct will find that a prolonged residence in a centre like Naples—the daily attrition of its ape-and-tiger elements—sullies their homely candour and self-respect.
For a tigerish flavour does exist in most of these southern towns. Camorra, the law of intimidation, rules the city. This is what Stendhal meant when, speaking of the “simple and inoffensive” personages in the _Vicar of Wakefield,_ he remarked that “in the sombre Italy, a simple and inoffensive creature would be quickly destroyed.” It is not easy to be inoffensive and yet respected in a land of teeth and claws, where a man is reverenced in proportion as he can browbeat his fellows. So much ferocity tinctures civic life, that had they not dwelt in towns while we were still shivering in bogs, one would deem them not yet ripe for herding together in large numbers; one would say that post-patriarchal conditions evoked the worst qualities of the race. And we must revise our conceptions of fat and lean men; we must pity Cassius, and dread Falstaff.