When a vain man has arrived at fortune, he has only two ambitions: to pay or attribute to himself a noble title and to compose a respectable and decorative genealogy.

A second-hand dealer takes care of him, unearthing, among the neglected, a collection of parchments and a series of paintings where lords and ladies of all sizes stand still in pretentious poses. And this forms "the gallery of ancestors"

Mr. Mussolini, becoming Dictator, had himself crowned Duce, then charged the engineer (sic) Emile Rosetti with the formation of his genealogy.

This gentleman discovered a certain Cornelius Musso, ecclesiastic, who lived towards the middle of the sixteenth century. This Cornelius Musso was a professor at the Universities of Bologna and Pavia. He distinguished himself by a rare eloquence at the Council of Trent and became Bishop of Forlimpopoli.

The engineer (re-sic) Emile Rosetti claims that this name Musso was, as a diminutive, transformed into Mussolino, then into Mussolini.

Would this ingenious engineer, who makes surveys, not of geology, but of genealogy, be jealous of the dunce's cap of Professor Martino, of Naples? We regret less that the discovery of the works of Titus Livius was only a canard.

The history of the life of the Caesars passes into the second plan: only the life of the modern Caesar, I named Mr. Mussolini, son of an archbishop, should interest us.