The chanting ceases, and the priests in their gorgeous vestments stream down the altar steps towards the sacristy. I have come at an unlucky moment! The sacristy at least will be closed till the priests have done unrobing! But no! The hawk-eyed sacristan has marked down the stranger, and hurries up obsequious and eager to detain me. I cannot think of leaving without seeing the most interesting sight in Naples--the coffins? "Si, sicuro! The very sarcophagi of all the princes of the House of Aragon." "But they are in the sacristy," I object, "and that is full of priests unrobing!" "Oh, you English, you odd people," hints the sacristan, with a shrug. "What does that matter?" If he does not care, why should I? And in another moment we are in the sacristy. Clearly the sacristan knew his ground, and has committed no breach of manners; for among the crowd of ecclesiastics, young and old, which fills the long panelled chamber, some jovial, some ascetic, many chatting pleasantly, others resting on long seats, not one betrays the least surprise at the intrusion of a tourist bent on sightseeing. High dignitaries, arrayed like Solomon in his glory, make way courteously as the sacristan draws me forward, and standing in the centre of the vast apartment points out that the panelling ceases at half the height of the walls, leaving a kind of shelf, on which lie, shrouded in red velvet, to the number of five-and-forty, the coffins of the family of Aragon, and the chief adherents of their house. Here, taking what rest remorse allows him, is that Ferdinand who trapped the barons in Castel Nuovo. His son Alfonso, who shared in that and other infamies, is not here. He lies in Sicily, whither he fled at the bidding of the furies who pursued him. But close by is his son, the young King Ferdinand, whose chance of redeeming the fame of his house was lost by death. And here is that luckless Isabella, Duchess of Milan and of Bari, whose husband, Duke Giovanni Galeazzo Sforza, was robbed of throne and life by his uncle Ludovic the Moor, the man who, more than any other, was accountable for all the woes and slavery of Italy. What bitter tragedies were closed when the scarlet palls were flung over those old coffins! Here, too, is the dust of the base scoundrel Pescara, archetype of treachery for all ages, at least of public treachery. In private life his heart may have been true enough, else how could his wife Vittoria Colonna have loved and mourned him as she did? It is no new sight to see a woman lay great love at the feet of a man who, on one view, is quite unworthy of it. Her knowledge is the wider, and the account as she cast it may be the truer. Why need we be puzzled that we cannot make our balance agree with hers? How is it possible that we should?