((Welcome, Glueth! I like your character - Italian unification is silly
))
((Yeah, I can see why everybody is jumping onto the bandwagon for it, but
somebody has to oppose it))
((I think our characters are going to be great friends, Glueth
))
((You should get on IRC, we might have things to discuss
))
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"
Degenerates!" Eugenio spat, furiously stubbing his cigar out on the windowsill. "Filthy, liberal, Carbinaro
degenerates!"
Luigi put down the newspaper, and sighed. On the front page, the news of the Genoa riots ran.
"You may have made that point," he said. "Many times," he added.
"I don't know what the King was thinking, allowing these... nationalists into the Parliament. His father wouldn't have stood for this. He
didn't stand for this!"
"His father wouldn't stand for much. He wasn't a man for standing, was Charles Felix. Preferred to sit down, and let the Austrians do all the work."
"Hah. Funny," Eugenio said. "One would think you were a liberal. You
are a lawyer. It wouldn't surprise me."
His friend shrugged. "God knows I loathe them just as much as the next man. But you know as well as I do that what the King wants, he does. Thats what Divine Right is. We're compelled by ideology to accept it. Rebelling against the King is a luxury only the Liberals get."
"Doesn't mean I have to like it."
"What can you do? Run against them? Swan-dive headfirst into the pit of degeneracy?"
Eugenio ashed his cigar, and looked out the window. Below him, the grape vines of the Aosta vinyards swayed serenely in the summer breeze. The leaves were relatively quiet now, but perhaps there was a harsher wind coming.
"Its an idea," Eugenio said, quietly.
"Hah, you in politics? There's a thought," quipped Luigi. "Can you imagine yourself in parliament? You would have an apoplexy within minutes. Seconds, even, if you saw a liberal early enough."
Eugenio grinned. "Like you said, what else can I do? Somebody has to stop the degenerates." With that, he grabbed his pen and a piece of paper. That arch-degenerate himself, the Bonaparte, did once say that he feared four newspapers more than he did a thousand bayonets - perhaps now he would be proven right, in that at least.