The Albergo dei Poveri at Naples is the finest poor-house in Italy. It accommodates upward of three thousand paupers of both sexes, and is provided with workshops and schools, so as to afford suitable employment and instruction. Notwithstanding this model establishment, and numerous others, whose annual revenues amount to nearly two millions and a half of dollars, Naples is infested with a large mendicant population in addition to the numbers accommodated in the poor-houses. The Lazaroni are a class peculiar to the place. Many of them utterly refuse to work, and prefer to subsist on the smallest coin of the kingdom which they can gain by begging. They bask in the sun all day, sleep on the ground or on the steps at night, and starve with the utmost complacency. An Epicurean might find in this abnegation of the cares of life a sound practical philosophy. That such a class is in the highest degree obnoxious to society must be apparent to every one. In the famous rising of Cardinal Ruffo, at the time of the French occupation in 1805, the Lazaroni perpetrated the most frightful excesses, and are said to have been relied on by the imbecile Bourbon government as their chief friends and supporters against the dangers of French Republicanism. Modern progress has drawn even Naples and the Lazaroni within its magic circle, and an accomplished traveler expresses doubts of their alleged unconquerable laziness, for he has seen them work, wear clothes, sleep at home, earn money when they had a chance, and conduct themselves very much like other people.[229] Perhaps, as with the Irish, a want of fair remuneration may be at the root of their idleness. A singular institution of Italian society is the _Cicisbeo_, or _Cavaliere Servente_. This is a distant male relative, or friend, who invariably attends a married lady on all occasions of her appearance in public. He pays her all conceivable attentions, and performs even the most servile offices; carries her fan, her parasol, or her lapdog. We are not aware that any foreigner has been able to settle this anomaly of social life to his satisfaction. The Italians themselves sometimes maintain that there is no immorality or impropriety in the arrangement--that it is a matter of etiquette, in which the heart is in no way concerned. The husband is perfectly cognizant of it, and the appearance of the cicisbeo with the lady is more _de regle_ than that of her husband. Originally, there can be very little question that the institution was of an amorous character, and the parties met privately at the Casini, where certain apartments were specially dedicated to the use of the ladies and their cavalieri.[230] With the French occupation of 1800 the custom became the subject of immoderate raillery and satire, and there is reason to believe it has been but partially revived.