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The councillors hurriedly decided that the best available site, on the whole, was that strip of waste ground where the fishermen sat pottering. The pedestal was promptly planted. Umberto was promptly wrapped up, put on a lorry, wheeled to the place, and hoisted into position. The date of the unveiling was fixed. The mayor I am told, had already composed his speech, and was getting it by heart.
Umberto commanded the 16th division; Umberto was twenty-two years and so many days old; Umberto mounted a horse thus and so. "Fifteen years!" he said vehemently, accelerating his pace. "I really have a great desire to see him again. I left him a prince; I see him once more, a king. And I, too, have changed. From a soldier I have become a hawker of wood." And he laughed.
Practically, though, and morally, the palm is, so far, to the fishermen. The pedestal does not really irk them at all. And the cost of the litigation comes not, you may be sure, out of their light old pockets, but out of the coffers of some pious rich folk hereabouts. The Pope remains a prisoner in the Vatican? Well, here is Umberto, a kind of hostage. Yet with what a difference!
All that is vital in it is the ecclesiastical establishment, which still clings, with true ecclesiastical conservatism, to the hill-top city, and the trade of the straw plaiters, who make Leghorn straw goods and pester the visitor with their flimsy wares, taking no answer to all their importunities save one in solid coin of good King Umberto. One last question.
Umberto Giordano, who during the last few years has steadily worked his way to the front rank of Italian composers, started his career with a succès de scandale in 'Mala Vita' , a coarse and licentious imitation of 'Cavalleria Rusticana. There is far better work in 'Andrea Chénier' , a stirring tale of the French Revolution set to music which shows uncommon dramatic power and in certain scenes a fine sense of lyrical expression.
Guarda che bianca luna Il tempo passato Lascia ch' io pianga Dolce far niente Batti batti nel Masetto Da capo Ritardando Andante Piano Adagio Spaghetti Macaroni Polenta Non e ver Ah, non giunge Si la stanchezza Bravo Lento Presto Scherzo Dormi pura La ci darem la mano Celeste Aida Spirito gentil Voi che sapete Crispino e la Comare Pieta, Signore Tintoretto Boccaccio Garibaldi Mazzini Beatrice Cenci Gordigiani Santa Lucia Il mio tesoro Margherita Umberto Vittoria Colonna -Tutti frutti Botticelli Una furtiva lagrima.
Victor Emmanuel the Great and Umberto the Kind already lie there; but otherwise the wide Cyclopean eye of the opening in the roof of the rotunda looks down upon a vacancy which even your own name, as written in the visitors' book, in the keeping of a solemn beadle, does not suffice to fill, and which the lingering side altars scarcely relieve.
Cruel was the thrill of dismay I had when at length the cord was pulled and the sheeting slid down, revealing so dull a sight... Years had passed. I was grown older and wiser. I had learnt to expect less of life. There was no fear that I should disgrace myself in the matter of Umberto. I was not so old, though, nor so wise, as I am now.
If Umberto could grasp the truth that no man is worthy to be reproduced as a statue; if he could understand, once and for all, that the unveiling of him were itself a notable disservice to him, then might his wrath be turned to acquiescence, and his acquiescence to gratitude, and he be quite happy hid. Is he, really, more ridiculous now than he always was?
Whenever the councillors had nothing else to talk about they talked about the site for Umberto. Presently they became aware that among the poorer classes of the town had arisen a certain hostility to the statue. The councillors suspected that the priesthood had been at work. The forces of reaction against the forces of progress! Very well!
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