On the first of February, at half-past one, the ceremony of delivering the bride into the hands of the Neapolitan envoy took place in the Governor’s palace. Across the centre of the great salon a silken cord had been stretched, representing the boundary line between Bavaria and Naples. Beside this were placed a table, covered with red velvet, and two gilded arm-chairs. The room had folding doors at either end, one of which was decorated with the colors of Naples and guarded by Neapolitan marines, while at the other, similarly adorned with Bavarian arms and banners, stood a band of the royal Bavarian retainers. The Neapolitan envoy, with two ladies of high rank who had come to act as escort to the Princess, were stationed on their side of the boundary line with the Admiral and officers of the ship that was to carry Maria Sophia and her suite to Naples, while the Duchess and her Bavarian escort entered through the other door and took their places. The two envoys then advanced from their respective positions to the silken cord, where they exchanged documents concerning the marriage. The Count von Rechburg addressed a few words of farewell to the youthful bride, who rose and extended her hand for her German attendants to kiss, after which the Count led her to the middle of the room and gave her into the hands of the Duke of Serracapriola, who humbly begged her to seat herself in the Neapolitan arm-chair while he delivered a short address of congratulation and welcome. This almost mediæval ceremony concluded, Maria left the salon through the door draped in Neapolitan colors and went directly on board the _Fulminante_, in the cabin of which the Empress Elizabeth and Prince Ludwig took an affecting farewell of their young sister. The greater part of her suite embarked on another vessel, the _Tancredo_, and an hour later both ships were steaming out of the harbor of Trieste. Chapter V The Neapolitan Royal Family King Ferdinand the Second, the reigning Prince of Naples at this time, came of bad stock. The reign of his grandfather, Ferdinand the First of Naples and Fourth of the Two Sicilies, of whom King Frederick of Prussia once aptly remarked that he was more fit for a prison cell than a throne, had been one long scandal, and his son, Francis the First, followed faithfully in his father’s footsteps during his short reign (1825-1830). Ferdinand the Second had naturally a good mind, and at the time of his accession to the throne had roused great hopes by the military and financial reforms he introduced and by his wise plans for developing the resources of his impoverished kingdom. This did not last long, however, for he soon began to display the same despotic tendencies that had made his father and grandfather so abhorred by the people, and the older he grew the more marked these became.