trade union with a president, secretary, officers and so on. It is
rather an esprit de corps, and no more a secret society than omerta is a
secret society; nevertheless, they speak of the mafia as being more
highly organised in some districts than in others, and there are secret
societies whose members are mafiosi, so that for a foreigner to speak of
the mafia as a secret society would appear to be an excusable error.

Among every collection of men, and even in a herd of bullocks, one is
always the acknowledged leader, and in a sulphur-mine it naturally
happens that one man has a more dominating personality, more prepotenza,
than any of the others; this capo-mafioso takes the lead and is king.
When, as often happens, he is a man with a respect for law and order,
willing to be useful to the managers, the mafia can and does supplement
in an amateur fashion the deficiencies of professional justice. If
Giovanni Grasso were really a worker in a sulphur-mine, as he sometimes
appears to be on the stage, he would certainly take the lead, and no one
who knows him will believe that he could ever be capable of a bad action.
But few men can safely be trusted with absolute power. Sometimes this
capo-mafioso is a villain who glories in a record of crime, a
brow-beating bully who will stick at nothing. Here is a situation for a
melodrama--the Wicked Despot. He does as he chooses with those around
him, who fear lest he should treat them as Don Toto treated Don Andrea
before the opening of _Omerta_, and as he treats Saru in the course of
the play; and they not only fear, they also admire an unscrupulousness of
which they feel themselves to be incapable. They refer their disputes to
him and execute his orders. They do not pay him money for adjudicating
between them, it is enough for him to have the satisfaction of being
asked to arbitrate and, by giving his decision and seeing that it is
carried out, he consolidates his power. But he exacts from them a
percentage of their winnings at cards as tribute, and they pay it
willingly so as to keep on good terms with him. Of course, under the
throne of any of these tyrants, among those who have sufficient daring,
conspiracies are continually surging and, sooner or later, whether he is
a good or a bad man, he has to give way to a stronger--perhaps a fresh
arrival, who takes the public fancy. Sometimes there are two with
apparently an equal power of dominating; they agree not to quarrel
o