There was no horse-racing in the Cascine that afternoon; nothing but the
usual football. The pastime is well worth a glance, if only for the sake
of sympathizing with the poor referee. Several hundred opprobrious
epithets are hurled at his head in the course of a single game, and play
is often suspended while somebody or other hotly disputes his decision
and refuses to be guided any longer by his perverse interpretation of
the rules. And whoever wishes to know whence those plastic artists of
old Florence drew their inspiration need only come here. Figures of
consummate grace and strength, and clothed, moreover, in a costume which
leaves little to the imagination. Those shorts fully deserve their name.
They are shortness itself, and their brevity is only equalled by their
tightness. One wonders how they can squeeze themselves into such an
outfit or, that feat accomplished, play in it with any sense of comfort.
Play they do, and furiously, despite the heat.
Watching the game and mindful of that morning's discourse with Madame de
Maintenon, a sudden wave of Anglo-Saxon feeling swept over me. I grew
strangely warlike, and began to snort with indignation. What were all
these young fellows doing here? Big chaps of eighteen and twenty! Half
of them ought to be in the trenches, damn it, instead of fooling about
with a ball.
It would have been instructive to learn the true ideas of the rising
generation in regard to the political outlook; to single out one of the
younger spectators and make him talk.
