I Could Not Even Ask Him What Had Become Of The Grocer Near By,
Whom I Used To Get Some
Homely supplies of, perhaps eggs or oranges, or
the like, when I came out in the December mornings, and who,
When I said
that it was very cold, would own that it was _un poco rigidetto,_ or a
little bit stiffish. The ice on the pavement, not clean-swept as now,
but slopped and frozen, had been witness of that; the ice was gone and
the grocer with it; and where really was I? At the window up there, or
leaning against the apse of the church opposite? What church was it,
anyway? I never knew; I never asked. Why should I insist upon a common
identity with a man of twenty-seven to whom my threescore and ten could
only bring perplexity, to say the least, and very likely vexation? I
went away from Via del Gambero, where the piety of the reader will seek
either of myselves in vain. In my earlier date one used to see the red
legs of the French soldiers about the Roman streets, and the fierce
faces of the French officers, fierce as if they felt themselves
wrongfully there and were braving it out against their consciences. Very
likely they had no conscience about it; they had come there over the
dead body of the Roman Republic at the will of their rascal president,
and they were staying there by the will of their rascal emperor, to keep
on his throne the pope from whom the Italians had hoped for unity and
liberty.
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