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Updated: May 28, 2025
"I adore terribly long stories," he declared. "And have we not before us the whole of future time?" "Sampaolo came to be an Island of the Distressed," said she, "because, some half-century ago, the Sampaolesi got infected with an idea that was then a kind of epidemic the idea of Italian unity.
But Count Antonio had a younger brother, also named Guido, who coveted the succession for himself, and had long been intriguing to secure it organising secret societies among the people, to further the idea of Italian unity, and bargaining with the King of Sardinia for the price he should receive if he contrived to bring the Sampaolesi to give up their independence.
The present régime is liked by no one save the officials who benefit by it; but it tickles the vanity of the Sampaolesi to call themselves citizens of a Great Power; and so, though many are republicans, many socialists, none are legitimists.
Under the old régime, for example," she illustrated, "Vallanza was a free port, now we have to pay both a national duty and a municipal duty on exports as well as imports; nothing was taxed but land, and that very lightly now nearly everything is taxed, even salt, even a working-man's tools, even a peasant's necessary donkey, so that out of every lira earned the government takes from forty to sixty centimes; the fisheries of Sampaolo, which are very valuable, were reserved for the Sampaolesi, now they are open to all Italy, and Sampaolo, an island, cannot compete with Ancona, on the railway.
But the worst evil of all is the condition of the Church. In the old days the Sampaolesi were noted for their piety; now, even in modern irreligious Italy, you would seek far to unearth a people so flagrantly irreligious. From high to low the men are atheists; and the few men who are not, have to be very careful how they show it.
And though many times the Turks tried to take it, and many times the Venetians, and though sometimes the Pope tried to take it back, when the Pope happened to be a difficult Pope, the Sampaolesi, who were splendid fighters, always managed to hold their own." Again they took some paces in silence.
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