tion by the June of that same year. The life which he thus, not
without misgivings, ventured to communicate to the world was an
obscure life, its riches wholly inward and of the spirit.

Santa Chiara, beloved of Neapolitans, lifts its ruined but stiff
graceful tower above the serried rooftops of the city. About it, the
unmoving mountains and the gently troubled bay draw a magic
circle of serene and smiling nature beneath the intense and throbbing
light of the Mediterranean sky. At the feet of Santa Chiara's tower,
however, nothing is untroubled, nothing serene. Here the restless life
of the poorest quarter of Naples seethes and bubbles and sometimes
roars along the narrow and tortuous streets. Before the gates of
decayed palaces street vendors hawk their wares; plodding donkeys,
laden almost to the breaking point, dispute the way with men who
stumble under burdens hardly less onerous. A pastry-cook, balancing
a tray of smoking pizza on his head, is followed by the hungry, and
sometimes plotting, glances of clamouring boys and idle men, while
in the tower's shadow a legless, sightless creature lifts imploring
arms and voice to God and passers-by. Along the narrow street which
leads past the palace of the Filomarino toward the square of San
Domenico the tenders of the tiny, shabby shops lounge in dim door-
ways while here and there on the pavement, before the airless bassi,
a mother stoops above a minute fire, preparing the family meal. It
is the life of the Neapolitan poor, lived out in all its contradictions,
without reticence or apology; a life basically unchanged through
centuries, the first life Vico knew and the life from which, in out-
ward circumstances, he was never wholly delivered. ¹

For part of its length between Santa Chiara and San Domenico
Maggiore this street is called by a new name, Mariano Semmola; but
beyond, where it opens on the Largo San Domenico, it retains the
name as well as the character it bore when, in the middle decades
of the seventeenth century, a young contadino from the region of
Maddaloni, one Antonio Vico, first stumbled on its unaccustomed
cobbles. San Biagio dei Librai, it is still called, and the tiny bookstalls
from which the name derives are still, as they were then, prominent
among its dim and cluttered shops. Here Antonio Vico found
occupation at a succession of humble tasks; but he was, in the manner

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