I knew he had fainted, but I spoke to him again to make sure, and I even laid my hand on his shoulder and shook him a little. Then I put my umbrella on the step, and my bag of cream puffs on that, and began to sop my handkerchief in the least dirty looking puddle that I could find. And all the time I did this I frowned just as hard as I could at two little Italian boys who had paused to look on, and I said “Basta!” very fiercely, but they didn’t go on; instead they stood eating their chestnut paste and chattering with the greatest excitement. And soon their lingering proved a help to me, for their noise made an old lady pause. She had a tray of combs and hairpins, that were studded with rhinestones and red glass, hung from her shoulder by a wide tape, and after she had studied the situation, she slipped the tape down over her arm, set her tray on the dryest spot she could find, and squatted before my charge and began to rub his hands. And while she did this she talked loudly and quickly at me until I was so confused that I lost all the use and understanding of the thirty or forty Italian words that I really _did_ know. Then a shopkeeper who wore a long, once white apron and who was chewing a toothpick came along and stopped, and _he_ asked questions, and the old lady and the little boys all answered at once, and made their arms go like hard-working, energetic windmills as they answered. Then two soldiers in their olive drab came along, and _they_ paused and wanted to know what was wrong, and the little boys and the old lady _and_ the shopkeeper answered _them_, and they stood talking. And then a well dressed man of, I should say, the middle class, saw our group, and joined it, and _he_ wanted to know what was up, and when he was answered it sounded exactly like the point in a ball game where the home team makes the first run made, in the last half of the tenth inning. And I suppose it must have been funny, but it didn’t seem so to me then. The man had been unconscious for so long that I was very, very much worried, and I didn’t know _what_ to do! And when still another man paused and asked _the_ important question, and the whole thing was enacted again with even more enthusiasm, and more noise, I felt as if I were absolutely marooned. There was something very dreadful about those few moments during which I needed help so badly and had no way of asking for it. The last man to join the volunteers stepped forward and I saw that he was an officer of the Infantry, and he looked as dapper as they always do in spite of the fact that mud was on his gleaming boots and that some passing cart or motor had evidently splashed mud up on a corner of his wide blue cape. He bared his head and bowed to me, and then held out a little coral charm that looked like a horn, and which I found later are carried by millions of Italians as talismans against all sorts of evil.