Assuredly they will.
Everybody acts as he feeds.
Then lingered on the departure platform, comparing its tone with that of
similar places in England. A mournful little crowd is collected here.
Conscripts, untidy-looking fellows, are leaving - perhaps for ever. They
climb into those tightly packed carriages, loaded down with parcels and
endless recommendations. Some of the groups are cheerful over their
farewells, though the English note of deliberate jocularity is absent.
The older people are resigned; in the features of the middle generation,
the parents, you may read a certain grimness and hostility to fate; they
are the potential mourners. The weeping note predominates among the
sisters and children, who give themselves away pretty freely. An
infectious thing, this shedding of tears. One little girl, loth to part
from that big brother, contrived by her wailing to break down the
reserve of the entire family....
It rains persistently in soft, warm showers. Rome is mirthless.
There arises, before my mind's eye, the vision of a sweet old lady
friend who said to me, in years gone by:
"When next you go to Rome, please let me know if it is still raining
there."
It was here that she celebrated her honeymoon - an event which must have
taken place in the 'sixties or thereabouts. She is dead now.
