etting it
by heart. Around the pedestal the fishermen sat pottering. It was not
observed that they received any visits from the priests.

But priests are subtle; and it is a fact that three days before the date
of the unveiling the fishermen went, all in their black Sunday clothes,
and claimed audience of the mayor. He laid aside the MS. of his speech,
and received them affably. Old Agostino, their spokesman, he whose face
is so marvellously wrinkled, lifted his quavering voice. He told the
mayor, with great respect, that the rights of the fishermen had been
violated. That piece of ground had for hundreds of years belonged to
them. They had not been consulted about that statue. They did not want
it there. It was in the way, and must (said Agostino) be removed. At
first the mayor was inclined to treat the deputation with a light good
humour, and to resume the study of his MS. But Agostino had a MS. of his
own. This was a copy of a charter whereby, before mayors and councillors
were, the right to that piece of land had been granted in perpetuity to
the fisherfolk of the district. The mayor, not committing himself to any
opinion of the validity of the document, said that he--but there, it is
tedious to report the speeches of mayors. Agostino told his mayor that
a certain great lawyer would be arriving from Genoa to-morrow. It were
tedious to report what passed between that great lawyer and the
mayor and councillors assembled. Suffice it that the councillors were
frightened, the date of the unveiling was postponed, and the whole
matter, referred to high authorities in Rome, went darkly drifting into
some form of litigation, and there abides.

Technically, then, neither side may claim that it has won. The
statue has not been unveiled. But the statue has not been displaced.
Practically, though, and morally, the palm is, so far, to the fishermen.
The pedestal does not really irk them at all. On the contrary, it and
the sheeting do cast for them in the heat a pleasant shadow, of which
(the influence of Fleet Street, once felt, never shaken off, forces
me to say) they are not slow to avail themselves. 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! Here is no spiritual king stripped
of earthly kingship. Here is an e