“His Majesty” (“Sua maestà”)

Translated by Rafael Romero Lauro

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “His Majesty” (“Sua Maestà”), tr. Rafael Romero Lauro. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2026.

“His Majesty” (“Sua Maestà”) was first published under the title “S.M.” in the literary journal Il Marzocco on July 3, 1904. It was then republished with the expanded, and final, title in 1915 when Pirandello added it to his miscellany collection Weeds from Our Garden (Erba del nostro orto) printed by Studio Editoriale Lombardo in Milan. It was then added to the third Collection of his Stories for a Year (Novelle per un anno), A Prancing Horse (La rallegrata), in 1922.

The story plays with a series of familiar Pirandellian themes, which however take on a new and interesting humorous dimension here. First, it is one of several stories that take as their setting a political showdown in a nondescript small town, where the traditional ruling class finds itself at odds with the new parties and movements seeking to reshape Italian life. Here, a conservative ex-mayor is confronted by a socialist government official, playing on a common dynamic in Italy in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when there was a fierce electoral battle going on and the emergence of new workers’ parties were upending long-established systems of economic and political power and privilege across the country. These dynamics drew on and complicated the history of Italy’s recent unification, with the Risorgimento establishment of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861 under the rule of Vittorio Emanuele II. The figure of the king, in turn, is another major theme of the story, as the two contending figures, the local ex-mayor Cavaliere Decenzio Cappadona, and the Royal Commissioner sent from Rome, Commendator Amilcare Zegretti, both bear a striking resemblance (not accidental) to the deceased monarch. The battle between the local political boss and symbol of social status and power against the representative of a “distant,” “foreign,” and new political power of the central government, also plays out as a confrontation of these two doppelgangers whose countenance signifies the legacy of the Risorgimento itself. The story is thus laden with political symbolism at the same time that it unfolds in a much more familiar Pirandellian vein, as well: as a humorous account of human pretentions and the ways in which we fight, fruitlessly, against embedded social structures and mores. In this respect, the story also draws on both Pirandello’s longstanding connection to verismo, the school of Sicilian realism that re-centered literary attention on everyday life and social struggles with an emphasis on elevating and making visible the voices of common workers and their small town circumstances, as well as his own developing theory of humor, which he would theorize a few years later in his famous essay On Humor (L’umorismo, 1908). Pirandello’s humor in this story is ironic, using the surface-level comedy of doubling to underline a deeper split in the national psyche, on the one hand, and between abstract political ideals and the concrete local structures that undermine them.

The Editors

Alongside tragedy, however, we also had farce in Costanova,[1] when the City Council was dissolved and the Royal Commissioner arrived from Rome.[2]

That morning in the waiting room of the station, beating his chest with both of his little hands, which were swimming in a pair of gray gloves with frayed fingertips, Melchiorino Palì was fuming:

“I swear, it’ll be us! It’ll be us who start the revolution…ution. Us!”[3]

His colleagues from the dissolved Council (the council gone wrong, in the grumbled words of the station attendant, a little old Tuscan registered, as was customary at the time, with the socialist association of rail workers) had decided, after lengthy discussion, to come greet the guest at the station, adversary or not.[4] And they came in frock-coats and top hats. Palì had tried to advise against it, arguing that they absolutely shouldn’t. He’d failed to persuade them and, in the end, came along with them. But in humble everyday clothes. In protest.

Teeny, tiny with a little red beard and blue glasses, smothered by a stiff green hat that fell back onto his neck, bending his ears under the brim, smothered by a heavy tobacco-colored coat, he kept on railing, flailing furiously. But then he turned his attention to the illustrated posters on the waiting room walls, seeing as no one in his company would listen to him anymore.

The old station attendant, meanwhile, delighted in it, a mocking little sneer across his face.

From one of those posters, a smiling girl in a titillating dress was offering him an overflowing beer as if to shut him up. But in vain.

“Revolution! Revolution!” badgered Melchiorino Palì who, when he was this worked up, repeated the last syllables of words two or three times, as though he were producing their echo himself: “Ution… ution…”

He was outraged, not so much over the dissolution of the Council (he really didn’t give a fig… ig… not even a dry fig… ig… that he was no longer a council member), as over the nauseating spectacle that the Government was making of itself in front of the whole nation, shamelessly conspiring with the socialist party until it ceded victory to those four scoundrels running about Costanova with red carnations in their lapels, protected by the Honorable Mazzarini, a deputy who in Costanova had however only received 22 votes… otes.[5]

Now this, without a doubt, was an act of revenge by Mazzarini, who, as he left for Rome, had sworn to teach the town a lesson once and for all having proven such a bitter enemy… emy. But what was the lesson? The dissolution of the Council? Oh, come on! Hogwash! Melchiorino Palì viewed the matter from a higher standpoint… oint. Ten, twenty, thirty lire a day, to a tram driver, to a rail worker? After four, five months of training, if that! And yet a high-school teacher, a judge, who’s studied for twenty years to earn a degree and faced incredibly difficult exams and job competitions, they didn’t have it, they didn’t have thirty lire a day! And all the sympathy, meanwhile, all of the concern goes to the so-called proletariat… ariat… ariat!

At this point, though it wasn’t clear how,[6] the girl from the poster, as though fed up with pointlessly offering her mug of beer to someone gesticulating so angrily at her, tore herself away from the wall and came crashing down onto the leather sofa where the former mayor, Cavalier Decenzio Cappadona, sat.[7]

“Damn! And there goes the nail!” cried the old station attendant, running up with a sneer.

And Cappadona sprang to his feet, cursing, and sent Melchiorino Palì—standing there with his mouth wide open and hands in the air—hurtling into one of his colleagues.

“What? What have I got to do with it? I don’t know squat about the nail coming out!” Palì cried, turning furiously to his colleague; then he grabbed him by a button of his coat and said: “Don’t these reasons seem indisputable to you? Because, yessiree, I’m all for it: thirty lire a day…ay… to the tram driver, to the rail worker… I’m all for it! But then give a hundred to the judge, to the teacher… eacher… and if not, by God we’ll do it ourselves, we will start the revolution…ution… By God we will!”

His colleague looked down at his button. He had a threadbare bowler hat but wore it with such dignity and had so carefully arranged his appearance that now, listening to that harangue, he felt torn apart and was nodding and scoffing and rolling his eyes. In the end, he couldn’t take it anymore: he ditched Palì and went over to Cavalier Cappadona, imploring him to use his authority to silence that madman. It was downright indecent to yell like that, to wear your misery on your sleeve. What a disgrace!

But Cavalier Decenzio Cappadona, who had already composed himself and now sat lost in thought, made the faintest gesture with his hand and then began to stroke his magnificent, regal goatee.

In Costanova, they called him His Majesty because he was the spitting image of Vittorio Emanuele II in hunting attire:[8] the same physique, the same mustache, the same goatee, the same upturned snub nose; Vittorio Emanuele II himself, purus et putus, purus et putus,[9] as the notary Colamassimo—who knew Latin—liked to say.

Cavalier Cappadona, too, had come in his everyday clothes. But so what? It was well known that he never changed, not even for the grandest occasions, out of his magnificent corduroy hunting outfit with the boots and the wide-brimmed hat with a feather tucked into the band—exactly like the ones worn by the great King in that famous portrait that served as Cavalier Decenzio’s model.

The naysayers claimed that he had no other qualifications for being mayor of Costanova than this extraordinary resemblance, and that he had studied nothing his whole life other than that portrait of the first King of Italy.

That second smear might have had some truth behind it; the first, none.

Because looking like Vittorio Emanuele II wasn’t enough, even in those days, to be elected mayor of a municipality, the Comune.[10] Indeed it was hard to find a single town in Italy that didn’t have at least one man who looked like, or tried to look like, Vittorio Emanuele II, or even Umberto I;[11] and even still, that didn’t make him councilor for the minority party 

Truth was, you needed something else.

And that something else, well, Cavalier Decenzio Cappadona had it. As a millionaire, he could indulge himself by splurging exclusively in all moral and material pursuits in the assertion of that likeness.

In Costanova, he was king; his home, a palace. In the countryside he kept a corps of numerous uniformed guards who served as his personal army. All the townspeople, except a handful of enfranchised clowns led by the republican Leopoldo Paroni, were more his subjects than his voters. He had a magnificent stable, a prized pack of hounds; he loved women, loved the hunt: who could be more Vittorio Emanuele than he?

Now, during the last administration, one of the Councilors must have committed some minor administrative blunder: Cavalier Decenzio wasn’t quite sure. He was king, after all: he reigned; he did not govern. The fact of the matter was that the Council had been dissolved. The Royal Commissioner would be arriving at any moment; Cavalier Decenzio had gone to the trouble of coming to the station to greet him courteously, confident that this newcomer, too, would become his temporary, most-devoted subject. New elections would be held, and he would be re-elected mayor, rethroned king, without a shadow of a doubt.

The electric alarm began to ring. Cappadona yawned, stood up, and tapped his riding crop against his boots, and as usual, mumbled, “Bumba… bumba…”[12] then stepped out, followed by the others, under the station canopy. Melchiorino Palì was still repeating “It’ll be us who start the revolu…” but then spotted two soldiers at the door of the waiting room, and the final syllables caught in his throat. What came out a moment later, as usual, was only the faint, trailing echo:

“Ution…ution…”

The lineman’s loudspeaker crackled in the distance: you could hear the train’s whistle.

“Bell!” ordered the stationmaster who had come to pay his respects to Cavalier Cappadona.

And in comes the train, chugging and majestic. Everyone’s lining up waiting, tense with the excitement that the arrival of a convoy—in its noisy, violent grandeur—tends to provoke. The rail workers run to open the doors yelling, “Costanova! Costanova!” and from a first-class car, a sallow, short-sighted beanpole with stringy blond whiskers hands his suitcase to the porter and softly says:

“Royal Commissioner.”

Those waiting watch him with disappointment and surreptitiously elbow one another. And with his dignified bearing, Cavalier Decenzio Cappadona steps forward when all of a sudden—is this some kind of joke? a hallucination?—behind that short-sighted beanpole, stepping majestically down onto the carriage step was another Vittorio Emanuele II, even more Vittorio Emanuele II than Cavalier Decenzio Cappadona.

The two men, face to face, stare at each other, astounded. Not one of the former Councilors dares to step forward. Even the stationmaster who had come to introduce the former mayor to the Royal Commissioner remains frozen in place. And this other Vittorio Emanuele is none other than Commendator Amilcare Zegretti,[13] the Royal Commissioner himself, who then passes through the breathless crowd and with shoes sharply squeaking as though expressing his prideful vexation he slips into the waiting room, his personal secretary scampering after him.

“Se… se… se…”

He struggles to find his voice. The other doesn’t dare look him in the eye.

“Send for the sta… the stationmaster, please.”

Under the canopy, the stationmaster stands by and eyes each and every member of the dissolved Council, all of them still dazed, and Cavalier Cappadona, utterly dumbfounded as if abandoned by his faculties. The personal secretary approaches him, diffident and unsteady:

“Excuse me, Mr. Stationmaster, a word.”

The stationmaster hurries obligingly to the waiting room, where he finds Commendator Zegretti with eyes open wide and ablaze, a hand propped below his nose, in what seemed a contemplative pose, yes, but was clearly meant to hide his mustache and other appendages.[14]

“Pardon me, but those… those gentlemen…”

“Certainly, sir, members of the dissolved Council, sir. They’ve come expressly to pay their respects, Commendatore, sir.”

“Thank you, and… there’s… excuse me, there’s also…what’s his name again?”

“The former mayor? Cavalier Cappadona, yessir. He’s actually here to…”

“All right, all right. Do thank him for me, but tell him that… that I’ve also come to conduct a… a little investigation, you see. So it wouldn’t exactly be prudent… I’ll see him at Town Hall. Please, send my secretary in, would you? Where is he? Where has he disappeared to?”

The secretary, under the canopy, was swarmed by members of the dissolved Council. Melchiorino Palì had put the matter bluntly.

“Either he shaves, or the other one does.”

What nonsense! Absolutely not! The newcomer had to shave, no question: after all Cappadona’s resemblance to Vittorio Emanuele II was known to all, and therefore, if he were the one to shave, and the Royal Commissioner were to enter Costanova as Vittorio Emanuele in his place, it would inevitably have created a scandal. An unheard-of scandal, because in Costanova, the arrival of that Royal Commissioner was an honest-to-goodness event. The houses of Costanova would’ve teetered in heaves of disturbing hysteria, even the cobblestones would’ve leapt from the road bed, baring themselves like so many teeth, in an eruption of laughter.

“Mazzarini! Mazzarini!” Melchiorino Palì shouted louder than the rest. “It was him, the Honorable Mazzarini! This is the revenge he promised us! The unforgettable lesson! He was the one in Rome who chose this Royal Commissioner for Costanova…ova…ova… The scoundrel! An offense to the memory, to the image of our Great King! A mockery, an afront to  the dignity of authority!”

This had to be avoided at all costs; they had to send for a trusted barber straightaway and, right there in that waiting room, convince the Royal Commissioner to sacrifice his goatee at the very least… yes, and a tiny bit of his mustache, too, before entering the town.

But who would shoulder the unbearable burden of making such a proposal to Commendator Zegretti?

Cavalier Decenzio Cappadona went away, sullen, and with his riding crop lashed out against the white mignonettes and golden barberry shrubs that grew between the cracks of the ancient parapet blocking the entrance of the station.

“Marcocci!” roared Commendator Zegretti in that instant, appearing in the doorway of the waiting room, furious.

The poor secretary, overwhelmed by the assignment foisted upon him by the former Councilors, crept in like a dog who smells trouble in the air.

“A carriage!”

“Wait… excuse me, Commendatore, sir…” Marcocci stammered. “If you… if you were willing… those gentlemen were saying… before going into town… right here… they said… because—did you see? It’s, well… the former mayor—have you seen him? Now, those gentlemen were saying…”

“Spit it out!” Zegretti shouted.

“Well, sir… right here, you could… if you wished… they say… send for a… what’s it called? And get… at least just a bit… yes, just the mustache, Commendatore, sir, that’s what those gentlemen said.”

“What?” roared Commendator Zegretti, standing up as if about to explode, bursting with anger and resentment. “You do realize I am now the highest authority in this town?”

“Why of course, sir, of course I do, sir!”

“And so? A carriage! Marche!”[15]

And off he went, scowling, chest puffed out, whiskers flowing, nose in the air.

Naturally, what the members of the dissolved Council had feared came to pass in Costanova.

The Honorable Mazzarini could not have exacted a more perfect revenge—not only against Decenzio Cappadona, his bitter rival, but also against the established authority itself; he being a socialist.

Costanova, backward and conservative? Come now! With two kings! And each one armed against the other, each the portrait of the other.[16]

Now in the great room of Town Hall like a caged lion was Commendator Zegretti, thinking back on the task assigned him by that deputy in Rome, and why he was sent to Costanova as Royal Commissioner instead of someone else, and thinking back on the great satisfaction he had felt at being given this task, he now seethed with rage, twisting his mustache until it pulled his lip across his face, stroking his long goatee, digging his nails into the palms of his fists; he saw red!

How can you be Royal Commissioner if you can’t even show your face without being laughed out of town?

If not for that other fellow, his appearance would surely have commanded more respect. It showed devotion to the monarchy, even fanatical worship of the Great King’s memory. But now… this… And what if someone were to write about it in the newspapers in Rome? What if some Deputy were to speak about it in the Chamber?

Thinking along these lines, Commendator Zegretti got more and more worked up; he would walk, stop, walk a little more, stop again, grumbling every time and shaking his fists in the air.

That room in Town Hall was magnificent, with its divided platform in bas-relief and gilded ornamentation. Cavalier Decenzio Cappadona had it decorated and lavishly furnished at his own expense. On the back wall the first king of Italy towered majestically from a large oil portrait that Cappadona himself had commissioned there in Costanova from a traveling painter; he himself had sat as the model.

“Imbecile! You fool! So dark? When was Vittorio Emanuele II ever so dark?”[17]

Dirty blond hair and blue eyes: now that’s what Vittorio Emanuele II looked like—more or less like Commendator Zegretti, who therefore had an almost natural right to cultivate his likeness. But then, any scoundrel with a slightly upturned nose and some facial hair could pass for Vittorio Emanuele II, if it wasn’t for the color of his hair, the color of his eyes.

More than one person in Costanova agreed with the Royal Commissioner, claiming that he did, in fact, resemble Vittorio Emanuele II with those bovine eyes more than Cappadona did. Others, however, argued the opposite, and the debate grew more heated with each passing day. At the sight of him passing by, everyone would come out of their shops or run to their windows to stop and stare at him.

“Handsome? Oh, please, he’s breathtaking! Just look at him!”

But none of them was able to witness the most ludicrous scene of all, which took place in Town Hall, where one morning both Vittorio Emanueles found themselves face to face with one another. And there was even a third one, painted in oil, life-size, enjoying it all from the wall in silence.

That morning, a large crowd had gathered outside Town Hall upon hearing that the Royal Commissioner had summoned Cappadona for questioning about his previous tenure in office. So you could only imagine Cavalier Decenzio’s spirits as he made his way through the dense throng toward the meeting—and Commendator Zegretti’s, too, hearing the din outside in the square.

Aside from the ridicule, which was obvious in the curiosity of the idlers, something else was quietly bothering Cappadona.

As generous as he’d been to the town, he was no less protective of all his gifts to the Comune.

For several days now, when passing Town Hall, he had noticed how the large front windows of the great hall itself were flung wide open to the sun. Those poor curtains! The poor furniture, exposed to that insolent light! And who knows how much dust there was! What a mess!

Cappadona was being ushered in by Secretary Marcocci when he saw the great Persian rug which stretched from one end of the floor to the other. It was in a pitiful state, as if pigs had trampled over it, and his stomach turned. He felt his fingers actually clawing into his palms when he saw that the man receiving him was showing him no regard whatsoever. My friends, that intruder!—that intruder so uncultured and unworthy of living in a place endowed with so much honor and splendor—even had the audacity to impersonate a king’s likeness.

Commendator Zegretti sat writing behind an elegant desk overflowing with papers. He’d had it moved there, into the great hall. Without even looking up, he said curtly:

“Have a seat.”

But Cappadona had already sat down of his own volition in the armchair across from him.

The Royal Commissioner, with his eyes still looking down, began explaining why he had summoned the former mayor.

At a certain point, Cappadona, who had been glaring at him, suddenly rose to his feet and clenched his fists.

“Excuse me,” he said, “but could we close these windows just a little?”

At that very moment, two or three jeers rang out from the crowd in the square below.

Zegretti raised his head, stroking one end of his mustache very solemnly and said:

“I’m not afraid, you know.”

“Who said anything about being afraid?” said Cappadona. “I meant for the sake of these poor curtains… and this rug, you’d understand.”

Zegretti looked at the curtains, then the carpet, sank into his chair and, stroking his long goatee, “Well,” he sighed, “I like it. You must understand, I enjoy working in the sunlight!”

Cappadona whined, “If only it didn’t ruin the furniture. I realize you don’t care about it at all, but if I may say so, I’ll have you know that it matters to me, because it’s mystuff.”

“It’s Town Hall’s, if anything…”

“No! Mine, mine, mine. Paid out of mypocket! The chair you’re sitting on—mine! The desk you’re writing on—mine! Everything you see in here—mine, mine, mine—paid for with my money, I say! And if you wouldn’t mind looking out the window, I’ll show you the school there, which I tore down and rebuilt out of my own pocket, fully furnished—by me! And there are also the technical schools—something Mr. Mazzarini, the district’s Deputy, couldn’t manage to get from the Government, even though it’s his job—I maintain them out of my own pocket—me! If you’d just stand up and look outside, I’ll show you another building further down; the hospital, constructed, equipped, and maintained by me, out of my own pocket… And this, now, is my reward, good sir! They send you here, and I don’t know why. I’m waiting for you to tell me—to explain to me exactly what you came here to do… But I already see… I already see…”

And Cavalier Decenzio Cappadona, opening his arms, began to look at the ruined rug.

With cold, phony calm, Commendator Zegretti’s eyebrows rose as high as two crescent moons.

“But I,” he said, “I am here to see what you have done, rather.”

“I’ve already told you what I’ve done! And there’s the proof—a whole town that can vouch for me! Who are you? What do you want from me?”

“I represent the Government here!” Zegretti replied heatedly, placing both hands on the desk.

Cappadona shuddered all over, three times.

“Oh, no sir! The Government? Unbelievable! I’ll tell you what you represent here.”

“Oh, please!” shouted the Royal Commissioner as he, too, rose to his feet. “I absolutely refuse to tolerate you putting on these airs in front of me!”

And the two Vittorio Emanueles finally locked eyes, pale and trembling with rage.

“Me? Putting on airs?” Cappadona sneered. “It seems to me that you’re the one doing that. You didn’t even bother to stand up when I walked in, as if Mr. Nobody walked in, here in this place where everything belongs to me.”

“But I don’t know these things, I don’t want them, and I don’t need to know any of this!” replied Commendator Zegretti, growing more and more agitated. “This is the seat of the City Government.”

“Exactly! The seat of the City Government! It’s not a stable!”

“You insult me!”

“If you say so…”

“Oh, is that right? Then allow me to show you out! There!”

And Commendator Zegretti pointed furiously to the door. They saw themselves, now, the two kings face to face; their mustaches quivered, their goatees twitched, and their upturned noses trembled.

“How dare you say that to me?” thundered the local Vittorio Emanuele.

His voice rang out in the square below, and a hurricane of jeers and wild shouts rose forbiddingly.

“Directly to you, yessir! Because I am not afraid!” raged the deathly pale Commendator Zegretti. “And if I find a single irregularity among these papers…”

“You’ll throw me in jail?” Cappadona concluded the sentence with a taunting smirk. “Go ahead, try it; try it and see what happens… Here, you represent nothing but four charlatans propped up by that crook Mazzarini, the socialist Deputy, enemy of the homeland and the king, you hear me? The king, the king! I’ll shout it right in your face, mask and all!”

Zegretti, in his rage, stunned even himself.

“Mask? Me?” he said. “What… about you? You’ve got a lot of nerve, by God! Get up! Get out of here! Me, mask and all? Tell me where—tell me when did you ever actually see Vittorio Emanuele, the man you’ve slandered there in that portrait? He wasn’t nearly so dark as you take him to be, you know, Vittorio Emanuele II!”

“Oh no? What was he like? Red-haired? Black-haired? Was he a republican? A socialist like you?[18] A champion of cheats? Shave, I say! Shave! You’ll look better! That way you won’t desecrate the King’s image! Enough, that’s all I have to say. See you at the next election, my good sir!”

And Cavalier Decenzio Cappadona stormed out, huffing with prideful disdain, face flushed with rage.

In the square, he was greeted by thunderous applause. To his closest friends anxiously awaiting him, he could only respond with these words:

“I’ll raise hell, mark my words!”

And thus began the brutal war between the two kings.

As was to be expected, however, defeat fell upon Commendator Zegretti, Cappadona having the whole town on his side.

The moment he appeared on the street, a handful of people would loudly call out to him:

“Sir! Mr. Mayor!”

He would keep walking, ignoring them; then another would run up to him, pat him amicably on the shoulder:

“Dear Decenzio!”

He would spin around abruptly, his eyes shooting flames, only to realize:

“Oh, excuse me, Commendatore! I thought you were Cavalier Cappadona… You must understand! Please forgive me…”

Entering Town Hall? The lobby had several walled-off entrances where splayed stone archways stuck out of the walls and created as many nooks. Well, from each one, an imp would spring out as Zegretti passed. They’d snap a military salute, shriek “Your Majesty!” and high-tail it out of there.

Commendator Zegretti then fired the doorman, a poor old codger who’d been allowed to stay there out of charity and had nothing to do with any of it. In fact, he usually left his wife in charge of the entrance while he meandered about town all day, asking aloud and from afar if, by chance, anyone wanted a shave.

Thrown out onto the street, he went crying to Cavalier Cappadona. His Majesty promised him that after the elections, he would reinstate him in his position, and in the meantime, he provided for him and his family. Happy, the old man showed his scissors to Cavalier Cappadona.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Cavaliere, if I ever get the chance, I’ll gladly grab him and shave him by force. Mustache, goatee and all, sir!”

This threat reached the ears of Commendator Zegretti, who from then on, only went out accompanied by two guards. And then, from a distance, jeers, shouts, and other raucous noises filled the air.

Things got worse when Secretary Marcocci, having grown even more dejected and short-sighted than the day of his arrival, accidentally burned off one end of his wispy blond whiskers with a candle one evening while sifting through some papers in a cabinet. He had no choice but to shave the other side as well.

The following day, seeing him clean-shaven, the entire town practically paraded him back to Town Hall in triumph, as if this poor man had shaven to show that they’d been right and to set a good example for his superior.

Commendator Zegretti never showed his face in town after that. Election day, at any rate, was fast approaching. Anticipating the people’s explosive jubilation over Cappadona’s inevitable landslide victory, he asked the Prefect of the provincial capital for some reinforcements as a precaution.

But the people of Costanova, well-paid and emboldened by wine from His Majesty’s cellars, were not intimidated by the soldiers, and on the day of the election they swarmed in frenzied protest. The guards stationed in front of Town Hall violently charged the crowd, but all the pushing and shoving, sending protestors flying in every direction, knocking them down and surrounding them on all sides leaving them gasping for air like fish out of water, was all for nothing. They just caught their breath and shouted even louder than before.

“Down with Zegrettiiiiii! Off with the goateeeeee! Shaaaaave! Shaaaaave! Long live Cappadonaaaaa! Shave, Zegretti!!!!”

Pandemonium.

But would he shave? No. Ah, he would never shave! Rather than give in to the man who unworthily believed himself to be the spitting image of Vittorio Emanuele II, rather than allow the true image of the great King to suffer defeat in his own person, Commendator Zegretti, not out of fear but defiance, had let the hair on his cheeks grow for several days.

That very evening, deeply disheartened, he left town sporting a beard worthy of a Capuchin friar, while the other was triumphantly enthroned once again in the Costanova Town Hall, more Vittorio Emanuele than ever.