But our patriotic gentleman allows the spy to walk
away, to climb fifty other mountains and take five thousand other
measurements, all of which have by this time safely reached Berlin and
Vienna. That, Signor Commissario, is not our English notion of
patriotism. I shall certainly make it my business to write and
congratulate the Banca d'Italia on possessing such a good Italian as
director. I shall also suggest that his talents would be more worthily
employed at the Banca - "(naming a notoriously pro-German establishment).
A poor speech; but it gave me the satisfaction of seeing the fellow grow
purple with fury and so picturesquely indignant that he soon reached the
spluttering stage. In fact, there was nothing to be done with him. The
delegato suggested that inasmuch as he had said his say and deposited
his address, he was at liberty to depart, whenever so disposed.
They went - he and his friends.
The other was looking serious - as serious as such a face could be made
to look. He must not be allowed to think, I decided, for once an
official begins to think he is liable to grow conscientious and
then - why, any disaster might happen, the least of them being that I
should remain in custody pending investigations. In how many more
countries was I going to be arrested for one crime or another? This joke
had lost its novelty a good many years ago.
"A pernicious person," I began, " - you have but to look at him. And now
he has invited me here in order to make a patriotic impression on his
friends, those poor little devils in uniform (a safe remark, since no
love is lost hereabouts between police and military). Such silly talk
about measurements! It should be nipped in the bud. Here you have an
intelligent young subordinate, if I mistake not. Let him drive home with
me at my expense; we will go through all papers and search for
instruments and bring everything that savours of suspicion back to this
office, together with my passport which I never carry on my person.
This, meanwhile, is my carta di soggiorno."
The document was in order. Still he hesitated. I thought of those
miserable three days' grace which were all that the French consulate had
accorded me. If the man grew conscientious, I might remain stranded in
Rome, and all that passport trouble must begin again. And to tell him of
this dilemma would make him more distrustful than ever.
I went on hastily to admit that my request might not be regular, but how
natural! Were we not allies? Was it not my duty to clear myself of such
an imputation at the earliest moment and to spare no efforts to that
end? I felt sure he could sympathise with the state of my mind, etc.
etc.
Thus I spoke while perfect innocence, mother of invention, lent wings to
my words, and while thinking all the time: You little vermin, what are
you doing here, in that chair, when you should be delving the earth or
breaking stones, as befits your kind? I tried to picture myself climbing
up Muretta with a theodolite bulging out of my pocket. A flagon of port
would have been more in my line. Calculations! It is all I can do to
control my weekly washing bill, and even for that simple operation I
like to have a quiet half hour in a room by myself. Instruments! If this
young fellow, I thought, discovers so much as an astrolabe among my
belongings, let them hang me from the ramparts at daybreak! And the
delegato, listening, was finally moved by my rhetoric, as they often
are, if you can throw not only your whole soul, but a good part of your
body, into the performance. He found the idea sufficiently reasonable.
The subordinate, as might have been expected, had nothing whatever to
do; like all of his kind, he was only in that office to evade military
service.
We drove away and, on reaching our destination, I insisted, despite his
polite remonstrances, on turning everything upside down. We made hay of
the apartment, but discovered nothing more treasonable than some rather
dry biscuits and a bottle of indifferent Marsala.
"And now I must really be going," he said. "Half-past one! He will be
surprised at my long absence."
"I am coming with you. I promised him the passport."
"Don't dream of it. To-morrow, to-morrow. You will have no trouble with
him. You can bring the passport, but he will not look at it. Yes; ten
o'clock, or eleven, or midday."
So it happened. The passport was waived aside by the official, a little
detail which, I must say, struck me as more remarkable than anything
else. He did not even unfold it.
"E stato un' equivoco," was all he condescended to say, still without a
smile. There had been a misunderstanding.
The incident was closed.
Things might have gone differently in the country. I would either have
been marched to the capital under the escort of a regiment of
carbineers, or kept confined in some rural barracks for half a century
while the authorities were making the necessary researches into the
civil status of my grandmother's favourite poet - an inquiry without
which no Latin dossier is complete.
POSTSCRIPT. - Why are there so many carbineers at Orvinio? And how many
of these myriad public guardians scattered all over the country ever
come into contact with a criminal, or even have the luck to witness a
street accident? And would the taxpayer not profit by a reduction in
their numbers? And whether legal proceedings of every kind would not
tend to diminish?
There is a village of about three hundred inhabitants not far from Rome;
fifteen carbineers are quartered there. Before they came, those
inevitable little troubles were settled by the local mayor; things
remained in the family, so to speak.
