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If you be an extraordinary man, as was his father, win a throne by all means: you will fill it. If your son be another extraordinary man, he will fill it when his turn comes. But if that son be, as, alas, he most probably will be, like Umberto, quite ordinary, then let parental love triumph over pride of dynasty: advise your boy to abdicate at the earliest possible moment.
As you follow the Via S. Lorenzo upwards, you come presently on your left to the Piazza Umberto Primo, in which is the Palazzo Ducale, the ancient palace of the Doges, rebuilt finally in 1777; and at last, still ascending, you find yourself in the great shapeless Piazza Deferrari, with its statue to Garibaldi, while at the top of the Via S. Lorenzo on your right is the Church of S. Ambrogio, built by Pallavicini, with three pictures, a Guido Reni, the Assumption of the Virgin, and two Rubens, the Circumcision and S. Ignatius healing a madman.
I was hurrying through the Galeria Umberto, on my way to a luncheon appointment for which I found myself late. As I passed Merola's a young woman was sitting before a counter, with her back to the street, trying on gloves. I could appreciate the gypsy grace of her figure, which was slender, because one of the avocations into which I have essayed without distinction is painting.
The ground was covered with horses and uhlans, wounded and dead. I turned round, and beheld in our midst Umberto, on horseback, gazing tranquilly about, with the air of demanding, 'Have any of my lads received a scratch? And we shouted to him, 'Hurrah! right in his face, like madmen. Heavens, what a moment that was! Here's the train coming!"
The Pope lost his temporal dominions, and was limited to the title and prerogatives of the spiritual head of the Catholic Church. The present king, Umberto I., ascended the throne 1878. In 1854 he promulgated the declaration of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. He thus determined authoritatively a question which had long been debated in the schools of theology.
Now and again there comes a monk from the monastery on that hill yonder. He laughs into his beard as he goes by. Two by two, in their grey cloaks and their blue mantillas, the little orphan girls are sometimes marched past. There they go, as I write. Not malice, but a vague horror, is in the eyes they turn. Umberto, belike, is used as a means to frighten them when, or lest, they offend.
"We should get every school ma'am in the Union, to begin with," said poppa confidently, and by the time we reached Verona he had floated the company, launched the first ship, arrived in Venice with full orchestral accompaniment, and dined the imitation Doge if he couldn't get Umberto and Crispi upon clam chowder and canvas-backs to the solemn strains of Hail Columbia played up and down the Grand Canal.
Umberto was going to and fro with his officers, while the cannon were thundering in the distance; and every one was gazing at him and saying, 'May there not be a bullet for him also! I was a thousand miles from thinking that I should soon find myself so near him, in front of the lances of the Austrian uhlans; actually, only four paces from each other, boys.
Every councillor had a pet site, and every other one a pet objection to it. That strip of waste ground where the fishermen sat pottering? It was too humble, too far from the centre of things. Meanwhile, Umberto stayed in the studio. Dust settled on his epaulettes. A year went by. Spiders ventured to spin their webs from his plumes to his mustachios. Another year went by.
He climbed these without loss of time, and directed his steps towards the Cafe Umberto. All the tables outside were occupied by a lot of people who were drinking. But as he wanted something to eat, he went inside into the cafe, which is divided into aisles by square pillars set all round with long looking-glasses.
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