"Favorite Son"

His Majesty Il Re Vittorio Emanuele is a Neapolitan, but not typical. True citizens of Naples are swart, merry fellows, quick to laugh, quicker to bluster, and apt to be stirring and shouting at all hours of the day or night. His Majesty, on the contrary, is cold, a martinet; but all the same he was born at Naples in 1869. Therefore thousands of Neapolitans lined the quays last week in their finest frenzy as the royal yacht Savoia, paced by four destroyers, swung into the Bay of Naples. A "favorite son" was home, pandemonium held carnival.

His Majesty is first a soldier, second a yachtsman and third an antiquarian--nor are his claims to these distinctions boasts. His early passion for the Army persists in the rigid, austere discipline of the Italian Court. He has yachted from blazing Syria to arctic Spitsbergen. Finally his carefully amassed collection of ancient Italian coins is scarcely rivaled. In this character of antiquarian His Majesty came to bright, frenzied Naples last week.

He came to inaugurate what may well prove the most important excavation of the present age. Steaming along the bay of Naples to Resina, the Savoia, cast anchor, and His Majesty disembarked at this modern hive of macaroni workers who dwell unconcerned above the buried ruins of Herculaneum, perhaps to be described as "the Newport of Imperial Rome." The city was obliterated by the same eruption of Vesuvius which engulfed Pompeii (1,848 years ago). Thirty feet of rock-hard lava cover the palaces of Herculaneum; but with the coming of His Majesty last week, rock drills began to purr and chatter.

Said Director General of Antiquities Signor Arduino Colasanti, with emotion, in a speech of welcome to the King:

"If there is any hope at all, of finding the final text of such Latin authorities as Livy and Varro, such hopes rest in Herculaneum alone. Pompeii will never give us any original documents, for the lava which buried it was porous and permitted the infiltration of water. This destroyed any papyri which may have existed. The volcanic substance which flowed over Herculaneum became so solidified that it may have preserved some few libraries.

"What we dream of being able to do is to lay hands on the library of some average Roman of medium culture. That would give us a wonderful insight into Latin literature of that time. It is not impossible that we might even find the text of some Latin popular comedies, which are known to have existed but which have never been found."

The incalculable importance of such finds to literature is clearer to no one than to His Majesty. Success might bring the discovery of works as important as those of Caesar, Virgil, Cicero. Little boys may yet be whipped for not studying attentively books perhaps to be discovered at Herculaneum. . . .

Il Re Vittorio Emanuele, having seen the excavation well started, returned to Naples. There the proverbially negligent inhabitants have recently completed a subway under the driving impetus of Fascismo. Moreover the boulevard along the seafront, long pot-holed and undulant, is now smooth. His Majesty looked upon these things and found them good. That night fireworks spurted up from a barge anchored in the bay, and Vesuvius made notable His Majesty's visit by an almost polite eruption. No lava spilled from the great cone, but jets of pinky-lighted steam spurted high, portentous rumblings were heard, and few rocks were belched. . . .

The visit of Il Re had been a complete, spectacular success.