"I am, sire," replied the undaunted soldier; "perhaps too bold, and I can crave your pardon on the plea that I am rendered bold by my zeal for your Majesty's service. The people of the whole kingdom we know to be discontented at the end of three short months. Now, as your Majesty has shown yourself full of the kindest and most liberal feelings towards them, this discontent can only be produced by the exactions and peculations of inferior persons. I mention it now, whatever it may produce, because I sincerely hope and trust that Naples may ever remain a dependency of the French crown; and it will be necessary that these things be examined into very closely, in order that the country may be rendered a willing and attached dependency, rather than a hot-bed of mutiny and discontent--a sore in the side of France." "You mean well, I know," said the king, rising; "let all preparations be made with speed to commence our march at the earliest possible day. Montpensier, we will confer with you privately on the defence and maintenance of the kingdom at the hour of noon--that is to say," he continued, with a faint smile, "if you can contrive to rise so early in the morning." Thus saying, Charles quitted the council chamber with a sad feeling of the weight and difficulty, the care and anxiety, the duty and responsibility of a crown. CHAPTER XXIX. I am about to quote from another who knew well the facts he recorded. His name matters not, but the whole is a translation, upon my word. "The king had remaining nine hundred men-at-arms, comprising his household troops, two thousand five hundred Swiss, two thousand of the French infantry, and about fifteen hundred men fit to bear arms that followed the army. These troops formed a body of nine thousand combatants at the utmost, with whom he had to cross all Italy. "This small army was not yet out of Naples when Ferdinand had effected his landing on the coast of Calabria, at the head of some Spanish troops. Charles began his march on the 20th day of May, not long after his coronation. He met with no impediment on his march to Rome, from which city the pope had fled. He passed through it, strengthened himself by the reinforcements collected from various garrisons which he had left in the strong places of the ecclesiastical states, and sacked the small town of Toscanella, which refused to receive his troops."