So one remains on the beaten track, although my reputation
here as non-Austrian (nobody bothers about the Germans) is fairly well
established since that memorable debate, in the local cafe, with a
bootmaker who, having spent three years in America, testified publicly
that I spoke English almost as well as he did. The little newsboy of the
place, who is a universal favourite, seeing that his father, a
lithographer, is serving a stiff sentence for forgery - he brings me
every day with the morning's paper the latest gossip concerning myself.
"Mr. So-and-so still says you are a spy. It is sheer malice."
"I know. Did you tell him he might - - ?"
"I did. He was very angry. I also told him the remark you made about his
mother."
"Tell him again, to-morrow."
It seldom pays to be rude. It never pays to be only half rude.
In October - and we are now at midsummer - there occurred a little
adventure which shows the risks one may run at a time like this.
I was in Rome, walking homewards at about eleven at night along the
still crowded Corso and thinking, as I went along, of my impending
journey northwards for which the passport was already vised, when there
met me a florid individual accompanied by two military officers.
