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.
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