“—— The old woman with the little white cloud above her head, who pointed to it and said: ‘It won’t rain to-day!’ that poor, shrivelled old woman whose sack I carried on my shoulders” (he had followed his fancy of travelling on foot for four days across the Apennines, between Bologna and Florence, and had slept a night at Covigliajo) “and whom I kissed when we got to the top of the hill ... one of what the curé of Covigliajo would have called my ‘good actions.’ I could just as easily have throttled her—my hand would have been steady—when I felt her dirty wrinkled skin beneath my fingers.... Ah! how caressingly she stroked and dusted my coat collar and said ‘figlio mio! carino!’ ... I wonder what made my joy so intense when afterwards—I was still in a sweat—I lay down on the moss—not smoking though—in the shade of that big chestnut-tree. I felt as though I could have clasped the whole of mankind to my heart in my single embrace—or strangled it, for that matter. Human life! What a paltry thing! And with what alacrity I’d risk mine if only some deed of gallantry would turn up—something really rather pleasantly rash and daring!... All the same, I can’t turn alpinist or aviator.... I wonder what that hidebound old Julius would advise.... It’s a pity he’s such a stick-in-the-mud! I should have liked to have a brother.
“Poor Julius! So many writers and so few readers! It’s a fact. People read less and less nowadays ... to judge by myself, as they say. It’ll end by some catastrophe—some stupendous catastrophe, reeking with horror. Printing will be chucked overboard altogether; and it’ll be a miracle if the best doesn’t sink to the bottom with the worst.
“But the curious thing would be to know what the old woman would have said if I had begun to squeeze. One imagines what would happen if, but there’s always a little hiatus through which the unexpected creeps in. Nothing ever happens exactly as one thinks it’s going to.... That’s what makes me want to act.... One does so little!... ‘Let all that can be, be!’ That’s my explanation of the Creation.... In love with what might be. If I were the Government I should lock myself up.
“Nothing very exciting about the correspondence of that Monsieur Gaspard Flamand which I claimed as mine at the Poste Restante at Bologna. Nothing that would have been worth the trouble of returning to him.
“Heavens! how few people one meets whose portmanteau one would care to ransack!... And yet how few there are from whom one wouldn’t get some queer reaction if one knew the right word—the right gesture!... A fine lot of puppets; but, by Jove, one sees the strings too plainly. One meets no one in the streets nowadays but jackanapes and blockheads. Is it possible for a decent person—I ask you, Lafcadio—to take such a farce seriously? No, no! Be off with you! It’s high time! Off to a new world! Print your foot upon Europe’s soil and take a flying leap. If in the depths of Borneo’s forests there still remains a belated anthropopithex, go there and reckon the chances of a future race of mankind....
“I should have liked to see Protos again. No doubt he’s made tracks for America. He used to make out that the barbarians of Chicago were the only persons he esteemed.... Not voluptuous enough for my taste—a pack of wolves! I’m feline by nature.... Well, enough of that!
“The padre of Covigliajo with his cheery face didn’t look in the least inclined to deprave the little boy he was talking to. He was certainly in charge of him. I should have liked to make friends with him—not with the curé, my word!—but with the little boy.
“How beautiful his eyes were when he raised them to mine! He was as anxious and as afraid to meet my look as I his—but I looked away at once. He was barely five years younger than I. Yes, between fourteen and sixteen—not more. What was I at that age? A stripling[H] full of covetousness, whom I should like to meet now; I think I should take a great fancy to myself.... Faby was quite abashed at first to feel that he had fallen in love with me; it was a good thing he made a clean breast of it to my mother; after that he felt lighterhearted. But how irritated I was by his self-restraint! Later on in the Aures, when I told him about it under the tent, we had a good laugh together.... I should like to see him again; it’s a pity he’s dead. Well, enough of that!
“The truth is, I hoped the curé would dislike me. I tried to think of disagreeable things to say to him—I could hit on nothing that wasn’t charming. It’s wonderful how hard I find it not to be fascinating. Yet I really can’t stain my face with walnut juice, as Carola recommended, or start eating garlic.... Ah! don’t let me think of that poor creature any more. It’s to her I owe the most mediocre of my pleasures.... Oh!! What kind of ark can that strange old man have come out of?”
The sliding door into the corridor had just let in Amédée Fleurissoire. Fleurissoire had travelled in an empty compartment as far as Frosinone. At that station a middle-aged Italian had got into his carriage and had begun to stare at him with such glowering eyes that Fleurissoire had made haste to take himself off.