The Italian secret societies are supposed hot beds of crime, and many of them certainly exist, though they do not practise their rites in the full limelight of publicity as they do in America.
The Neapolitan Camarra is the best organized of all the Italian secret societies. It is divided, military-like, into companies, and is recruited, also in military fashion, to make up for those who have died or been “replaced.”
The origin of secret societies will probably never be known. Italy was badly prepared to gather the fruits to be derived from the French Revolution, and it is possible that then the activity of the Carbonari, Italy’s most popular secret society, began. The Mafia is more ancient and has a direct ancestry for nearly a thousand years.
A hundred and twenty-five years ago the seed of secret dissatisfaction had already been spread for years through Italy. The names of the societies were many. Some of them were called the Protectori Republicani, the Adelfi, the Spilla Nera, the Fortezza, the Speranza, the Fratelli, and a dozen other names. On the surface the code of the Carbonari reads fairly enough, but there is nothing to show that any attempt was made to stamp out perhaps the most generally honoured of the traditions of Naples—that of homicide.
The long political blight of the centuries, the curse of feudalism, the rottenness of ignorance and superstition, had eaten out nearly every vestige of political and self-respecting spirit. After the restoration of the Bourbons the influences of the secret societies in Southern Italy were manifested by the large increase of murders.
CHAPTER III
CHIANTI AND MACARONI
A Chapter for Travellers by Road or Rail
THE hotels of Italy are dear or not, according to whether one patronizes a certain class of establishment. At Trouville, at Aix-les-Bains in France, at Cernobbio in the Italian Lake region, or on the Quai Parthenope at Naples, there is little difference in price or quality, and the cuisine is always French.
The automobilist who demands garage accommodation as well will not always find it in the big city hotel in Italy. He may patronize the F. I. A. T. Garages in Rome, Naples, Genoa, Milan, Florence, Venice, Turin and Padua and find the best of accommodation and fair prices. For a demonstration of this he may compare what he gets and what he pays for it at Pisa—where a F. I. A. T. garage is wanting—and note the difference.
The real Italian hotel, outside the great centres, has less of a clientèle of snobs and malades imaginaires than one finds in France—in the Pyrenees or on the Riviera, or in Switzerland among the Alps, and accordingly there is always accommodation to be found that is in a class between the resplendent gold-lace and silver-gilt establishments of the resorts and working-men’s lodging houses. True there is the same class of establishment existing in the smaller cities in France, but the small towns of France are not yet as much “travelled” by strangers as are those of Italy, and hence the difference to be remarked.
The real Italian hotels, not the tourist establishments, will cater for one at about one half the price demanded by even the second order of tourist hotels, and the Italian landlord shows no disrespect towards a client who would know his price beforehand—and he will usually make it favourable at the first demand, for fear you will “shop around” and finally go elsewhere.