Who shall sum up thy merciless vulgarity?
So this old man had been there.
And I remembered an expression in a book recently written by a friend of
mine who, oddly enough, had encountered some of these very Italians in
Zurich. He talks of its "horrible dead ordinariness" - some such phrase.
[33] It is apt. Zurich: fearsome town! Its ugliness is of the active
kind; it grips you by the throat and sits on your chest like a
nightmare.
I looked at the old fellow. He was sound; he had escaped the contagion.
Those others, those many hundred thousand others in Switzerland and
America - they can nevermore shake off the horrible dead ordinariness of
that life among machines. Future generations will hardly recognise the
Italian race from our descriptions. A new type is being formed, cold and
loveless, with all the divinity drained out of them.
Having a long walk before me and being due home for luncheon, I rose to
depart, and in so doing bestowed a vigorous kick upon Barone, in order
to test the truth of his master's theory. It worked. The glowering and
snarling ceased. He was a good dog - almost human. I think, with a few
more kicks, he might have grown quite friendly.
Along that hot road the spectre of Zurich pursued me, in all its
starkness. A land without atmosphere, and deficient in every element of
the picturesque, whether of man or nature.
