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King's Fishing. One May afternoon in 1946 Victor Emmanuel, wearing white gloves, went fishing for sgómbro, a kind of mackerel, in the bay of Naples. For hours he sat erect on a camp chair, his short, spindly legs clear of the royal yacht's deck. Only one sgómbro bit. The political fishing was just as bad. The king's few remaining friends told him that the Italian people would vote against the monarchy.
Victor Emmanuel, in a last effort to save his line, decided to abdicate in favor of Umberto. Wearily, he penned his abdication, got the date wrong, corrected it, and paid a notary a 129-lire (15¢) fee to register the document. Queen Elena cried. By this time, Italy's politicians professed not to care what he was doing or what his plans were; informed of the impending abdication, Premier Alcide de Gasperi said: "It's not even fourth or fifth on my list of matters of importance." .
Italians never got a chance to find out whether the kingly breed had improved: Umberto was dubbed Il Re di Maggio (King of the May), reigned but one month after his father. The Italian voters rejected the monarchy by a 5-to-4 margin.
Victor Emmanuel and Elena sailed for Egypt, whose King Farouk had offered them asylum. Stepping off the Italian cruiser at Alexandria, the exiled king cried to the sailors lined up amidships: "Farewell. . . . You are the men I loved the most." In his reign, Italy had embarked on five wars, two of them undeclared; more than 1½ million Italian soldiers and sailors had died in them.
In Alexandria, Victor Emmanuel and his wife found a twelve-room villa, paid for it by selling $56,000 worth of jewels. From the little king's personal fortune in England (estimated at $6,300,000) the British government doled out enough for a simple existence. He took the name Count of Pollenza, after a village in northern Italy. He walked and fished. When he read of events in his ex-country, he was heard to murmur, "This will be the death of me." On Christmas Eve, 1947, he was stricken with a lung infection complicated by hardening of the arteries. Four days later, in Alexandria, death, as it must to all kings, came to Victor Emmanuel. Clutching at a handkerchief, dry-eyed Elena sat up all night. In the morning a taxicab arrived with a plain wooden coffin tied on top for il piccolo.