was the mafiosita of Guido
Santo, the mule, at Castellinaria, that sunny morning when he trotted up
and down in his new harness before taking us to the shore, which put it
into our heads to make it also his festa. There is something of it in
the attitude of King Henry VIII, with his hat on one side and his arm
a-kimbo, as he appears in a full-length portrait by Holbein. There was a
good deal of it in the conduct of Giovanni in his Teatro Machiavelli on
one occasion when a lady music-hall singer failed to please; the public
hissed her and made such an uproar that she could not proceed. Giovanni
was, or pretended to be, furious. He behaved to his audience as Nino
Bixio behaved to his men on the Sicilian expedition. He came on and
abused them with gesticulation and language; he swore and stormed at
them; he appealed to their sense of chivalry; he threatened to come down
among them and teach them manners; he declared that they should hear her.
He made the piano-man play; he went and fetched the lady; he stood by her
side, frowning, with his arms folded, ready to break out, the
personification of angry determination and suppressed energy. The people
acquiesced and listened. When the singer had finished, they applauded;
and they were applauding not only her, but also Giovanni because he had
dominated them. It is a small theatre and their numbers may have been
four or five hundred--it would depend upon the programme and the kind of
evening it was--but if it had been the Teatro Bellini he would have
subdued them just as well, unless there had been present someone to
resist him with a stronger personality, and his experience had taught him
that the chances were against that.

An imposing personality is a useless possession unless there are others
willing to be imposed upon, and it is this willingness to be dominated
quite as much as the love of dominating that makes the mafia possible.
If I may "quote from memory":

Surely the pleasure is as great
Of being beaten as to beat.

Possibly the Sicilian charm contains among its many ingredients a trace
of this love of being dominated which, in England, we associate more
particularly with women, spaniels and walnut trees; and if it were not
so, history might contain less about the misgovernment of the island by
foreigners.

The mafia is not like the Neapolitan Camorra, it is not an organised
society such as one reads about in books for boys, nor is it a recognised