Meanwhile everybody
has just grounds of complaint against everybody else; the six or seven
inevitable lawsuits have sprung up and promise to last any length of
time, seeing that important documents have been lost or stolen and that
half the original contracting parties have died in the interval: nobody
knows what is going to happen in the end. It all depends upon whether
some patriotic person will step forward and grease the wheels in the
proper quarter.
And even then, if he hails from Acri, they of San Demetrio will probably
work against the project, and vice versa. For no love is lost between
neighbouring communities - wonderful, with what venomous feudal animosity
they regard each other! United Italy means nothing to these people,
whose conceptions of national and public life are those of the cock on
his dung-hill. You will find in the smallest places intelligent and
broad-minded men, tradespeople or professionals or landed proprietors,
but they are seldom members of the municipio; the municipal career is
also a money-making business, yes; but of another kind, and requiring
other qualifications.
Foot-passengers like myself suffer no inconvenience by being obliged to
follow the shorter and time-honoured mule-track that joins the two
places. It rises steeply at first, then begins to wind in and out among
shady vales of chestnut and oak, affording unexpected glimpses now
towards distant Tarsia and now, through a glade on the right, on to the
ancient citadel of Bisignano, perched on its rock.
