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Signor Filippo, tall, dark of overcoat, with his belly somewhat pear-shaped, and his shoulders hunched and sloping slightly, his face between frightened and ... and melancholy, and in its midst a big, rudder-like priest's or fish's nose, which could sound the great trump of the Last Judgment, if you blew on it—that was how it looked—though commendatorial and ministerial, yes; but in particular there was a something ... a sadness, an insecurity, and with it also a kind of reticence in his eyes, as he looked at the officer, Officer Ingravallo, almost as if afraid of losing his berth . . . the next time the Ministry fell: which was not to fall, on the other hand, until Forty-three, the 25th of July. A strange old crow, my God, all bundled up, inside those lapels and that elegiac scarf: a Ministering cleric from that group of very black ones that nest, by preference, between San Luigi de' Francesi and the Minerva. Unnoticed by the absent-minded or hurrying passer-by, one foot after the other in the easy hour of the day they are used to stroll over their beloved little side streets, from the arch of Sant'Agostino and Via della Scrofa, along Via delle Coppelle or the Pozzo delle Cornacchie, up to Santa Maria in Aquiro. On rare occasions they venture, very slowly, along Via Colonna and enter, agoraphobes all, the cobbled Piazza di Pietra, disdaining the half-liter and the snobbish pizzeria of the Neapolitan : and then from that alleyway of Via di Pietra they may even reach the Corso, but it has to be Holy Saturday, at the very least, opposite the Enciclopedia Treccani, to the most inviting clocks and watches of Catellani, the jeweler. In Lent or low Sundays, mourning and flabby, they are content to flank Santa Chiara, under the globes of the two hotels, up to the elephant and his graceful obelisk, past the shopwindows of rosaries and Madonnas: very slowly, or else: equally slowly, they go back: a bicycle grazing them, they turn into the Palombella and hug the back of the Pantheon, by now, however, retracing their steps as if a bit disappointed by the dusk.

Commendatore Angeloni had moved to Via Merulana some years ago, after the demolitions in Via del Parlamento and Campo Marzio, where he had lived since time immemorial. He must have been a gourmet, judging at least by the little packages, the truffles . . . Packages which, as a rule, he delivered to himself, with great concern and all due respect, holding them horizontally and on his chest, as if he were nursing them: the kind of package from de luxe grocers, filled with galatine or pate and tied with a little blue cord. And sometimes, for that matter, they also delivered them to his house, at two hundred and nineteen, at the very top; they "handed" them to him, as the Florentines would say. (Little artichokes in oil. Tunnied veal.)

"Signor Filippo here," Signora Manuela repeated. "Well, sometimes you've had one come, a boy with packages, and a white apron. I've never looked him in the face, so I couldn't come right out and describe him. But now that I think of it, the one this morning could have been yours, more or less. One evening, when I ran after him, he yelled down the stairs that he was going to your house, said he had to deliver some ham."

All eyes were trained on Commendatore Angeloni. The object of this attention became confused.

"Me? Grocery boys? . . . What ham?"

"Why, commendatore dear," Signora Manuela implored, "you wouldn't make me look like a liar, would you, telling me it isn't true in front of the officer here? . . . After all, you live alone . . ."

"Alone?" Signor Filippo rebutted, as if living alone were a sin.

"Well, is there anybody up there with you? Not even a cat...

"What do you mean by saying I'm alone?"

"I mean that if somebody delivers food to your house, when it rains, or in the evening . . . well, it can happen, can't it? Can't it? . . . Am I right?" Her tone was conciliating, as if she had winked at him to say: what kind of mess are you getting me into, you fathead?

And apparently,