Free Europe in the Looking Glass by Robert Byron Jan Morris Page B

town, but the side streets and the slum streets, are all arcaded. The fronts of the houses rest on every imaginable kind of arch, pillar and capital, Gothic and Classic. Thus it is possible to walk always in the shade and always under cover. The effect is one of strong shadows and bright arcs of light; while at night the pale glimmer of the street lamps flits in long streaks up the everlasting corridors, thick with the undispersed heat of the molten August day. And everywhere the echoes resound as in a huge subdued swimming-bath, to heighten the chatter and hubbub of thecafés, and accentuate the solitary footstep of an errant girl, or the bang of a door and the rattle of a chain.
    Though the opinions of others on the subject of hotels are tedious, the Baglioni deserves record as in our opinion the best in Italy. The food, which made no cosmopolitan pretences, showed to what heights Italian food could rise. The staff were attentive and polite, and the management offered to change our English cheques when the banks were shut. Finally our bill was not excessive. The building had been once an old palace, and the frescoed vaulting of the dining-room was still intact. This had been the work of one of the brothers Caracci, natives of the city, executed in that same late Roman style of design adopted by Raphael in the famous loggia at the Vatican.
    We ourselves were lodged in an annexe, also a former palace, with a staircase of grandiose proportions adorned with white and gold urns and rams’ heads. At the top was a frescoed ceiling representing some scion of the eighteenth century nobility borne aloft by attendant Graces – many of whom were also burdened with his various armorials. This staircase gave us a private entrance to another street, which, though we were not supposed to know of it, enabled us to forestall the dawn without waking the night-porter. On one occasion, however, the key was lost, the porter to all intents and purposes drugged, and David was obliged to shout Simon and myself awake through a fourth floor window – to the surprise of the neighbouring inhabitants. It was only a vivid dream that he was being murdered in the gutter beneath by the Fascisti that induced me to go to the door and rush quite unnecessarily into the street in my pyjamas. We shared our staircase with the local branch of the Maritime Bank and a number of other residents, whom we used to frighten by prowling up and down it on tiptoe, until the cashiers began to think that they were the victims of a plot.
    Next door but one was the Fascist Lodge, where meals were served to the members in an open courtyard. On the pavement of the arcade outside was inlaid the axe of the organization,surrounded by a wreath of laurel leaves. Thither we – or rather David and myself – had gone with our friend the night-watchman , to be enrolled; but it was unfortunately a necessary condition of membership that we should be permanent residents of Bologna. Though at times we began to think that this eventuality must be fulfilled, we never gave up hope of avoiding it. From our bedroom windows we could watch the activities of the local organization. One day three lorry loads of boys arrived back from a camping expedition. They seemed in high spirits. Fascismo is in fact a sort of boy scout regime; but instead of staves it carries revolvers. Italy is the victim not so much of a dictatorship, but of an ochlocracy, the rule of an armed mob, and an immature mob at that. Some slight account of the higher ideals of the party will be found in the last chapter but two.
    The days passed in various ways. An up-to-date shop in the main square provided us with English books and papers. It also stocked the life of Henry Ford, translated into Italian. I read a number of the plays of Shaw. That a technique so completely inartistic, that these bare anatomical views of human nature, the bones of which are dried and classified, not always correctly, for the sole purpose of