"...If history was made by the victims / it would be / a time made by minutes / of incessant and springing up ants / yet one by an intent to be..." so the great poet Alfonso Gatto wrote. History is made by so many little men and gestures. In "The Doge and other stories" they are gathered some little gestures that have changed the course of the history, extraordinary stories seen in their humanity. So, besides the great characters as a not specified Doge, the philosopher Blosso, Annibale Barca, Paolo Diacono, Muzio Scevola, Grajano d'Asti, Tiberius and Caius Gracchus, Nero, Maria Antonietta also little and ignored characters find a place: the killer who murdered Richard Coeur de Lion, an Ensi Sumero, a jailbird, a Mayor of the XIX century, a canter of the Middle Ages, the ghost of the Connacht, the companion-in-arms of Pietro Micca (who died for saving Turin in 1706). Here it is the essence of the history: a whole life crushed by the destiny, endless and small things in the hands of God.