For this is the place where the Children of the King lived and died for
many generations, and this house of Don Pietro Casale was theirs, and
the one on the other side of the cabbage garden, a smaller and poorer
one, in which Carmela died. The garden itself was once theirs, and the
vineyard beyond, and the olive grove beyond that, and much good land in
the valley. For they were galantuomini, and even thought themselves
something better, and sometimes, when the wine was new, they talked of
noble blood and said that their first ancestor had indeed been a son of
a king who had given him all Verbicaro for his own. True it is, at
least, that they had no other name. Through generation after generation
they were christened Ruggiero, Guglielmo, and Sebastiano "of the
Children of the King." Thus they had anciently appeared in the ill-kept
parish registers, and thus was Ruggiero inscribed for the conscription
under the new law.
And now, as you know, gaunt, weather-beaten Luigione, licensed master in
the coast trade and just now captain of the Sorrentine felucca
Giovannina, from Amalfi to Diamante with macaroni, there are no more of
the Children of the King in old Verbicaro, and their goods have fallen
into divers hands, but chiefly into those very grasping and
close-holding ones of Don Pietro Casale and his wife.
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