But The Sindaco, The French-Speaking Sindaco, Understood Me Not In The
Least, And It Seemed A Wicked Thing In Me To Expose Him In His Old
Age, So I Waited Till He Spoke.
He spoke a word common to all
languages, and one he had just caught from my lips.
'Tourist-e?' he said.
I nodded. Then he told them to let me go. It was as simple as that;
and to this day, I suppose, he passes for a very bilingual Mayor. He
did me a service, and I am willing to believe that in his youth he
smacked his lips over the subtle flavour of Voltaire, but I fear
to-day he would have a poor time with Anatole France.
What a contrast was there between the hour when I had gone out of the
cafe a prisoner and that when I returned rejoicing with a crowd about
me, proclaiming my innocence, and shouting one to another that I was a
tourist and had seventy-three lira on my person! The landlady smiled
and bowed: she had before refused me a bed! The men at the tables made
me a god! Nor did I think them worse for this. Why should I? A man
unknown, unkempt, unshaven, in tatters, covered with weeks of travel
and mud, and in a suit that originally cost not ten shillings; having
slept in leaves and ferns, and forest places, crosses a river at dusk
and enters a town furtively, not by the road.
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