"Do you know why Florentines, coming home from abroad, always rejoice to see that wonderful dome of theirs rising up from the plain?" "Why?" "Can't you guess?" "Let me see. It is sure to be something not quite proper. H'm.... The tower of Giotto, for example, has certain asperities, angularities, anfractuosities----" "You are no Englishman whatever!" he laughed. "Now try that joke on the next Florentine you meet.... There was a German here," he went on, "who loved Levanto. The hotel people have told me all about him. He began writing a book to prove that there was a different walk to be taken in this neighbourhood for every single day of the year." "How German. And then?" "The war came. He cleared out. The natives were sorry. This whole coast seems to be saturated with Teutons--of a respectable class, apparently. They made themselves popular, they bought houses, drank wine, and joked with the countrymen." "What do you make of them?" I inquired. "I am a Tuscan," he began (meaning: I am above race-prejudices; I can view these things with olympic detachment). "I think the German says to himself: we want a world-empire, like those damned English. How did they get it? By piracy. Two can play at that game, though it may be a little more difficult now than formerly. Of course," he added, "we have a certain sprinkling of humanitarians even here; the kind of man, I mean, who stands aside in fervent prayer while his daughter is being ravished by the Bulgars, and then comes forward with some amateurish attempt at First Aid, and probably makes a mess of it. But Italians as a whole--well, we are lovers of violent and disreputable methods; it is our heritage from mediaeval times. The only thing that annoys the ordinary native of the country is, if his own son happens to get killed." "I know. That makes him very angry." "It makes him angry not with the Germans who are responsible for the war, but with his own government which is responsible for conscripting the boys. Ah, what a stupid subject of conversation! And how God would laugh, if he had any sense of humour! Suppose we go down to the beach and lie on the sand. I need rest: I am very dilapidated." "You look thin, I must say." "Typhoid, and malaria, and pleurisy--it is a respectable combination. Thin? I am the merest framework, and so transparent that you can see clean through my stomach. Perhaps you would rather not try? Count my ribs, then." "Count your ribs? That, my dear Lieutenant, is an occupation for a rainy afternoon. Judging by your length, there must be a good many of them...."