“Viva il re!” he answered enthusiastically, showing his white teeth, and motioned us to a street going eastwards up the hill. I saw and recognised the same fellow once or twice afterwards. He was a Michele di Laudo—Mad Michael, they called him—who, as chief of his vagabonds, was to take a prominent part in the defence of the suburbs against the French.
We crossed the street under his protection, and on its farther side, before waving us on, he bent and snatched a kiss. The rank sweet touch of his lips was like a visé on my passport into hell. It seemed to bring the blaze, the colour, the stench of the reeling streets clashing to a focus in my brain, and it sent me speeding on half drunk and half sick, loathing and hugging myself. I was an angel in Sodom, running blindly for the refuge of God’s wing in a dazzle of roaring lights, and confused by the glare, knowing not whether I turned to the self I had left or to the self that was awaiting me. Gogo, straining in my wake, panted as I hurried before him—
“For every dog but the watch-dog, a bone.”
I turned on him, with a stamp.
“A bone! I am meat for your masters, I tell you.”
“I serve no Pissani,” he said sullenly.
I shook him in my anger.
“Never breathe his name to me again, or we part.”
“Very well,” he said. “I thought as much. He has got his deserts.”
“Has he?”