Convinced that ‘we always need fairy stories’, Morselli wrote this little tale at the beginning of the 1970s. It’s an ingenious and somewhat archaic fable set at the end of the nineteenth century, with the Italian king Umberto the First of Savoy as its central character.


Enticed over the Gotthard pass into Switzerland by what he perceives as an opportunity to turn a quick profit, Umberto sells off a property of his in Monferrato to an eccentric German lady. He sets off incognito with a faithful entourage for the Canton of Uri, and thus begins a light-hearted Belle Époque adventure whose farcical verve parades its origins in the French comic playwrights of the nineteenth century and whose ‘champagne-like music’ imbues the whole narrative with melodic rhythms.


The author abandons himself entirely to his own fertile imagination, categorically excluding any hint of an argument, ever faithful to his project of pure diversion. This is what the book is intended to be and if the reader doesn’t succumb, the writer does: ‘One person at least, I who wrote it, was diverted’.

‘She wore a plain high-necked travel-suit in mauve, the skirt cut so daringly short that it revealed the tops of her boots, with a hint of pleating at the hips, and at the hem the narrowest flounce of Venetian lace; the tight-fitting matching bodice tapered to a point in front and behind; the sole accessory was a little purse slung troubadour-fashion from her —waist-band and bumping against her thigh. In bizarre contrast to such elegant simplicity she sported a horsewoman’s diminutive glossy top-hat over one ear and trimmed with a white muslin ribbon trailing to her shoulders.’ p61