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By Root 1436 0

to be hers still, the more furious in the eyes, the more contemptuous of lip, the more beautiful. Dying of curiosity, the severe Pestalozzi listened, but did not hear: the creak of the springs, the rasping of the bike, an occasional exploded admission from the ass of the tugging horse, prevented him from enjoying that altercation, as excited to see as it was in fact, in reality: without counting the disturbing snaps of the whip, and the aaaah's of the simple-minded driver, who seemed every time to wake with a start, from his diver's lethargy, to emit his voice, quite uselessly: since the horse, poor beast, more than what it was doing, could not do, nor its kindly ass explode. No, he couldn't hear, the corporal.

"Because you have a bank book with a couple of lire in it," he heard all of a sudden, and put one foot on the ground, "that's the only reason, ugly as you are. That's why Igi lets on he's engaged to you. Go on. You're one of those girls that if she wants a boy, she has to buy him with money." And she spat, overshooting with her projectile, the helpless knees of the driver, who said aaah! but in vain, because his intervention was belated: and then because the horse had stopped and had already planted his legs apart for an unforeseen (to him, the master) need. The corporal's face relaxed; his spirit was consoled.

"Yes," Lavinia shouted, venemous, "you were fed up with giving him money, after all you had given him before, so he thought he'd leave that stuff with you. A guarantee. You bought it for two thousand lire—you told me so yourself!"

"Liar, witch, whore—if you want to be a stool-pigeon after all, you've got to tell the truth—because lousy spies like you are no good to anybody, not even to the people who pay you." "Ahoy, girls," Pestalozzi said, resenting the slight respect in which the cousins Mattonari seemed to hold him: "now what's got into you? You can fight it out at the barracks. The sergeant will be overjoyed to hear you both talking at once: he'll let you go on arguing till midnight and after, don't worry. Once you're in the coop, you can peck at each other all you want. But that's enough presently. Cut it out." Where he comes from they say "presently" rather than "now." They say it in Rome, too. So the argument of the two furies died down, faded, like thunder that becomes calm, fleeing, on the marvelous lips of Lavinia. The Farafilio, on foot, arrived overheated, his face flushed, except for the cheese-colored patches which whitened, as if for a belated confirmation, his jaws: just above the neck. He dragged after him, with some difficulty in the climb, that little balloon, so court-vetu, so uncovered to the caprices of the equinox, that it recalled the old story, of the regiment confirmed (not to say baptized) by fire.

Le bon vieux grenadier

qui revenait des Flandres . ..

était si court-vetu

qu'on lui voyait son tendre . . .

The horse, in the meanwhile, had finally regained his composure; and a definitive aaah brought him back to his job of tugging, before the good soldier came to learn the cause of the stop: which, from the distance, might have seemed a wait, ordered of the driver through the kindliness of his superior, and thus an act of clemency and total pardon granted him, Farafilio, in person. But, having glanced at the little hippuric lake, and sniffed the sweetish and still tepid steam that emanated from it, he displayed in the rubescent skin of his neck and the ad hoc zones of the face his reproof, his contempt. That little equine stop had been demanded by rude nature, but a blow of the whip might even have obviated it: there were two women present!

X

IN the same hours of the morning of that same day, Wednesday, March 23rd, when the search for Enea Retalli alias Iginio had proved vain at Torraccio, where he lived when he lived there, Sergeant Santarella cavaliere Fabrizio was riding on his motorcycle over the provincial highway from Marino to Albano, so stupendously shaded, or flanked by trees, in the gardens and the parks which cover the slope. March finds a part of them bare