en in a
convent ere the year was out.

Ferdinand, a brave youth, beloved by the nation in spite of his father's
and grandfather's tyranny, reigned in his stead. Yet even for him the
situation was untenable. Everywhere he was beset by traitors--by his
whole army at San Germano, by Trivulzi at Capua, by the German guide at
Naples. Without soldiers, without allies, with nothing to rely upon but
the untried goodwill of subjects who had just reason to execrate his
race, and with the conquerors of Italy advancing daily through his
states, retreat alone was left to him. After abandoning his castles to
pillage, burning the ships in the harbor of Naples, and setting Don
Federigo together with the Queen dowager and the princess Joanna upon a
quick-sailing galley, Ferdinand bade farewell to his kingdom. Historians
relate that as the shore receded from his view he kept intoning in a
loud voice this verse of the 127th Psalm: 'Except the Lord keep the
city, the watchman waketh but in vain.' Between the beach of Naples and
the rocky shore of Ischia, for which the exiles were bound, there is
only the distance of some seventeen miles. It was in February, a month
of mild and melancholy sunshine in those southern regions, when the
whole bay of Naples with its belt of distant hills is wont to take one
tint of modulated azure, that the royal fugitives performed this voyage.
Over the sleeping sea they glided; while from the galley's stern the
king with a voice as sad as Boabdil's when he sat down to weep for
Granada, cried: 'Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but
in vain.'

There was no want of courage in the youth. By his simple presence he had
intimidated a mob of rebels in Naples. By the firmness of his carriage
he subdued the insolent governor of Ischia, and made himself master of
the island. There he waited till the storm was overpast. Ten times more
a man than Charles, he watched the French king depart from Naples
leaving scarcely a rack behind--some troops decimated by disease and
unnerved by debauchery, and a general or two without energy or vigor.
Then he returned and entered on a career of greater popularity than
could have been enjoyed by him if the French had never made the fickle
race of Naples feel how far more odious is a foreign than a familiar
yoke.[1]

Charles entered Naples as a conqueror or liberator on February 22, 1495.
He was welcomed and feted by the Neapolitans, than whom no people are
more childi