Beneath the picturesque pile of Santa Maria a Pozzano, perched aloft above
the roadway, we pass along the edge of the sea-girt precipice, rounding
the Capo d’Orlando, until we reach the pretty little town of Vico Equense,
with its churches and gay-coloured villas nestling amidst groves of olive
and orange trees. Vico owes its prosperity in the first instance to the
patronage of “Carlo il Zoppo,” Charles the Dwarf, the lame son and heir of
King Charles of Anjou, who founded a settlement and built a villa upon the
site of the ancient Roman colony; and it was in the old royal demesne of
the Angevins that the hand of the deformed king’s daughter, the Princess
Clementia, was demanded formally in marriage by the French monarch, Philip
the Bold, who sought to marry her to his third son, Charles of Valois. The
match between the young prince of France and his cousin, the Neapolitan
princess, appeared suitable to all concerned in every respect save one;
for it was well known that the King of Naples had been lame from his
birth, and it could never be deemed fit for the expected heir of France to
marry any but a perfectly sound and healthy bride. Now the Queen of Naples
was too proud to accede to the hints of the French ladies, who evidently
were most anxious to acquaint themselves with the satisfactory condition
of her daughter’s “walking members,” though she went so far as to allow
the maiden to appear before them clad only in a flowing robe of gossamer
silk. The possible danger of losing her opportunity to become Queen of
France proved, however, beyond the ambitious young lady’s powers of
endurance, and to the horror of her haughty mother and the delight of the
foreign emissaries, the Princess Clementia then and there doffed her
silken robes and appeared before all in the historic garb of Lady Godiva.
A glance at the princess’s form _in puris naturalibus_ sufficed to
convince the inquisitive Frenchwomen that no hereditary taint from Il
Zoppo descended to his daughter; and accordingly the betrothal of the two
young people was celebrated that very evening amidst the usual revels and
feastings.