Here is an earthly
king kept swaddled up day after day, to be publicly ridiculous. The
fishermen, as I have said, pay him no heed. The mayor, passing along
the road, looks straight in front of him, with an elaborate assumption
of unconcern. So do the councillors. But there are others who look
maliciously up at the hapless figure. 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. The nun in whose charge they arc crosses herself.
Yet it is recorded of Umberto that he was kind to little children.
This, indeed, is one of the few things recorded of him. Fierce though
he looked, he was, for the most part, it must be confessed, null. He
seldom asserted himself. There was so little of that for him to
assert. He had, therefore, no personal enemies. In a negative way, he
was popular, and was positively popular, for a while, after his
assassination. And this it is that makes him now the less able, poor
fellow, to understand and endure the shame he is put to.
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