A delegation of Nationalist Party top officials went to Rome in a combative spirit in November 1977, dead set on convincing Italian Prime Minister and Christian Democrat ally Aldo Moro to stop assisting the Maltese socialist government that they claimed was oppressing them.
They failed, but returned with a lesson in diplomacy from the master himself.
Speaking at a round table lecture marking the 30th anniversary since Prof. Moro's assassination, former president Guido de Marco described the Italian PM's disarming response to his irritated appeal as a lesson he never forgot.
Prof. de Marco had written an editorial in the party's newspaper shortly before that meeting, titled O Tempora, O Moro - a play on Cicero's oration against Catiline O Tempora! O Mores, which served as a platform for what he and his colleagues were to tell Prof. Moro in Rome.
When they met, Prof. de Marco explained the PN's misgivings about the help the Italians insisted on giving Dom Mintoff's government time and time again.
"Aldo Moro said to us, I can understand what you're feeling and I suffer like you do because you know how much the DC and the PN share... but you have to look beyond the immediate," Prof. de Marco quoted Prof. Moro saying.
Prof. de Marco protested there was nothing more immediate than being humiliated and beaten, but Prof. Moro pointed out that the ties the DC maintained with Mr Mintoff would in time bear fruit.
"If we take an antagonistic position, we will lose any influence we may have on him and you'll suffer a perpetual negation of democracy," Prof. de Marco recalled Prof. Moro saying.
Besides Prof. de Marco, the delegation included the party officials Ugo Mifsud Bonnici, Ċensu Tabone and Eddie Fenech Adami.
"It was not just his words, but also his way, even his gestures," Dr Mifsud Bonnici commented, pointing out that even Dr Tabone had taken Prof. Moro to task.
The fruits of Prof. Moro's relationship with Mr Mintoff were to be continued by someone else as he (Moro) was kidnapped about five months after that meeting, but the anecdote highlighted the defining feature of his consensual politics and his bridge-building and what - the main thesis goes - ultimately brought him his death.
Prof. Moro, in fact, was kidnapped by his executors, the Brigate Rosse - in one of their most audacious attacks on the Italian State - while on his way to a session of the Italian Parliament. There, a discussion was supposed to take place on a vote of confidence in a DC government, which, for the first time, would have the support of the Communist Party (PCI) - a historic compromise of which communist leader Enrico Berlinguer and Prof. Moro were the architects.
Prof. Moro's lifeless body was found in the trunk of a red Renault, parked by the Brigate Rosse equidistant from the headquarters of the Christian Democratic Party and the Italian Communist Party on Rome's Via Caetani. He had been held captive for 55 days.
The event was a memento to Prof. Moro's life and politics, organised by the PN's political academy, Ażad.
Italian Senator Enzo Scotti, who was made health minister the same day Prof. Moro was kidnapped, and the Deputy Speaker of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Rocco Buttiglione also addressed the event.