But as I sat smoking and thinking
in the little cafe, which was bright and full of people, I noticed a
first danger-signal when I was told sullenly that 'they had no bed;
they thought I could get none in the town': then, suddenly, these two
men in white caps came in, and they arrested me with as much ease as
you or I would hold a horse.
A moment later there came in two magnificent fellows, gendarmes, with
swords and cocked hats, and moustaches _a l'Abd el Kader,_ as we used
to say in the old days; these four, the two gendarmes and two
policemen, sat down opposite me on chairs and began cross-questioning
me in Italian, a language in which I was not proficient. I so far
understood them as to know that they were asking for my papers.
'Niente!' said I, and poured out on the table a card-case, a
sketch-book, two pencils, a bottle of wine, a cup, a piece of bread, a
scrap of French newspaper, an old _Secolo,_ a needle, some thread, and
a flute - but no passport.
They looked in the card-case and found 73 lira; that is, not quite
three pounds. They examined the sketch-book critically, as behoved
southerners who are mostly of an artistic bent: but they found no
passport. They questioned me again, and as I picked about for words to
reply, the smaller (the policeman, a man with a face like a fox)
shouted that he had heard me speaking Italian _currently_ in the inn,
and that my hesitation was a blind.
This lie so annoyed me that I said angrily in French (which I made as
southern as possible to suit them):
'You lie: and you can be punished for such lies, since you are an
official.' For though the police are the same in all countries, and
will swear black is white, and destroy men for a song, yet where there
is a _droit administratif-_ that is, where the Revolution has made
things tolerable - you are much surer of punishing your policeman, and
he is much less able to do you a damage than in England or America;
for he counts as an official and is under a more public discipline and
responsibility if he exceeds his powers.
Then I added, speaking distinctly, 'I can speak French and Latin. Have
you a priest in Calestano, and does he know Latin?'
This was a fine touch. They winced, and parried it by saying that the
Sindaco knew French. Then they led me away to their barracks while
they fetched the Sindaco, and so I was imprisoned.
But not for long. Very soon I was again following up the street, and
we came to the house of the Sindaco or Mayor. There he was, an old man
with white hair, God bless him, playing cards with his son and
daughter. To him therefore, as understanding French, I was bidden
address myself. I told him in clear and exact idiom that his policemen
were fools, that his town was a rabbit-warren, and his prison the only
cleanly thing in it; that half-a-dozen telegrams to places I could
indicate would show where I had passed; that I was a common tourist,
not even an artist (as my sketch-book showed), and that my cards gave
my exact address and description.
But the Sindaco, the French-speaking Sindaco, understood me not in the
least, and it seemed a wicked thing in me to expose him in his old
age, so I waited till he spoke. He spoke a word common to all
languages, and one he had just caught from my lips.
'Tourist-e?' he said.
I nodded. Then he told them to let me go. It was as simple as that;
and to this day, I suppose, he passes for a very bilingual Mayor. He
did me a service, and I am willing to believe that in his youth he
smacked his lips over the subtle flavour of Voltaire, but I fear
to-day he would have a poor time with Anatole France.
What a contrast was there between the hour when I had gone out of the
cafe a prisoner and that when I returned rejoicing with a crowd about
me, proclaiming my innocence, and shouting one to another that I was a
tourist and had seventy-three lira on my person! The landlady smiled
and bowed: she had before refused me a bed! The men at the tables made
me a god! Nor did I think them worse for this. Why should I? A man
unknown, unkempt, unshaven, in tatters, covered with weeks of travel
and mud, and in a suit that originally cost not ten shillings; having
slept in leaves and ferns, and forest places, crosses a river at dusk
and enters a town furtively, not by the road. He is a foreigner; he
carries a great club. Is it not much wiser to arrest such a man? Why
yes, evidently. And when you have arrested him, can you do more than
let him go without proof, on his own word? Hardly!
Thus I loved the people of Calestano, especially for this strange
adventure they had given me; and next day, having slept in a human
room, I went at sunrise up the mountain sides beyond and above their
town, and so climbed by a long cleft the _second_ spur of the
Apennines: the spur that separated me from the _third_ river, the
Parma. And my goal above the Parma (when I should have crossed it) was
a place marked in the map 'Tizzano'. To climb this second spur, to
reach and cross the Parma in the vale below, to find Tizzano, I left
Calestano on that fragrant morning; and having passed and drawn a
little hamlet called Frangi, standing on a crag, I went on up the
steep vale and soon reached the top of the ridge, which here dips a
little and allows a path to cross over to the southern side.
