No escape! You are strangled, smothered; you might as
well have gone to bed with an octopus. In this horrid contrivance you
lie for eight long hours, clapped down like a corpse in its coffin.
Every single bed in rural England ought to be burnt. Not one of them is
fit for a Christian to sleep in....
The days are growing hot.
A little tract of woodland surrounded by white walls and attached to the
convent on the neighbouring hill is a pleasant spot to while away the
afternoon hours. You can have it to yourself. I have all Alatri to
myself; a state of affairs which is not without its disadvantages, for,
being the only foreigner here, one is naturally watched and regarded
with suspicion. And it would be even worse in less civilised places,
where one could count for certain on trouble with some conscientious
official. So one remains on the beaten track, although my reputation
here as non-Austrian (nobody bothers about the Germans) is fairly well
established since that memorable debate, in the local cafe, with a
bootmaker who, having spent three years in America, testified publicly
that I spoke English almost as well as he did. The little newsboy of the
place, who is a universal favourite, seeing that his father, a
lithographer, is serving a stiff sentence for forgery--he brings me
every day with the morning's paper the latest gossip concerning myself.
"Mr. So-and-so still says you are a spy. It is sheer malice."
"I know. Did you tell him he might----?"
"I did.
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