Instruments! If this
young fellow, I thought, discovers so much as an astrolabe among my
belongings, let them hang me from the ramparts at daybreak! And the
delegato, listening, was finally moved by my rhetoric, as they often
are, if you can throw not only your whole soul, but a good part of your
body, into the performance. He found the idea sufficiently reasonable.
The subordinate, as might have been expected, had nothing whatever to
do; like all of his kind, he was only in that office to evade military
service.
We drove away and, on reaching our destination, I insisted, despite his
polite remonstrances, on turning everything upside down. We made hay of
the apartment, but discovered nothing more treasonable than some rather
dry biscuits and a bottle of indifferent Marsala.
"And now I must really be going," he said. "Half-past one! He will be
surprised at my long absence."
"I am coming with you. I promised him the passport."
"Don't dream of it. To-morrow, to-morrow. You will have no trouble with
him. You can bring the passport, but he will not look at it. Yes; ten
o'clock, or eleven, or midday."
So it happened. The passport was waived aside by the official, a little
detail which, I must say, struck me as more remarkable than anything
else. He did not even unfold it.
"E stato un' equivoco," was all he condescended to say, still without a
smile. There had been a misunderstanding.
The incident was closed.
Things might have gone differently in the country.
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